ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted bank recovery after the global financial crisis, creating strong disruptions in macroeconomic trends and resulting in largely expanding budget deficits in 2020 and in reversing the tendency to control public debt through the region. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the impact of the pandemic on bank performance in the CEE region, represented by bank stability, bank profitability and credit accessibility. The empirical findings allow to formulate conclusions that some countries, such as Croatia, were disproportionally affected in terms of GDP growth and bank profitability, while some banking sectors (such as the Czech Republic and Estonia) have exposed strong resilience to the external shock, but for some the shock strengthened the already detrimental trends (Poland and Hungary).
