Makroekonomický rámec prípravy na vstup a fungovanie Slovenska v Európskej únii
MACROECONOMIC FRAMEWORK OF THE SLOVAK PREPARATION TO ENTER THE EUROPEAN UNION AND TO FUNCTION THERE

Summary/Abstract: One of the basic (Copenhagen) criteria that must be met by countries admitted into the EU is to establish operational market economy. Its attribute is to achieve continuous economic growth (GDP increase) at the level witnessing sufficient competitiveness of the country and the ability to eliminate gradually its economic lagging behind current EU member countries (solving its convergence task). The development of transitional economies and its comparison with the economic development in the EU countries proves that an indispensable condition to ensure conti-nuous growth rate sufficiently high to solve convergence task is balanced growth. This balanced growth is (as practical experience witness) markedly conditioned by maintain-ing the economy in the state of balance, which demands responsible economic policy, and, above all, consistent completion of reforms. When stressing the importance of macro-economic stability for the achievement of long-term high rates of economic growth (and thus also for the convergence the Slovak economy with EU countries), the demand of balance should not be superior over the need to increase economic performance. This is evident mainly when one tries to main-tain balance at by all means, e.g. also by limiting development sources and results. In relations between stability and growth causality acts both ways. Accentuation on one of its aspects and above all on the direction of impulses flowing from balance to growth has been pronounced only because Slovakia has transitional economy with strong unba-lancing factors and inefficient balancing mechanism. It is true that the relation between growth and balance without any one-sidedness has its sense in the economic growth ensuring gradual modernisation of the Slovak economy as a basis for the understanding of the economic convergence of the Slovak Republic with the EU countries. The cycles of weakening and strengthening of the macroeconomic balance are cha-racteristic also for the countries, which entered the EU during its previous enlarge-ments. One cannot unambiguously confirm that entering the EU alone could contribute toward the (de)stabilising of macroeconomic development in the short term or medium term horizon. Not the integration alone, but rather the currently acting internal features of Slovak economy functioning are the main risk factor endangering its stability. Chronic disposi-tion towards unbalance caused by the insufficient level of competitiveness was more than once only temporarily eliminated by various packages of stabilising measures. Intermediate consumption intensity and import intensity encoded in the production cause vulnerability of the economy. This, in addition, is enhanced as a result of the in-clination of public finance to reproduce deficits and liabilities.

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