Analysis of budget deficit in the candidate countries for EU membership

The problems of deficit and debt are the traditional drivers of the recession in the past. Due to the high impact of the budget deficit to increase in indebtedness and deterioration of a macroeconomic performance, the European Union in Maastricht Treaty and later in the Pact of Stability and Growth strictly defined fiscal criteria which the member states should adhere to. Fiscal criteria are particularly important when it comes to candidate countries for EU membership. The aim of this paper is that, through theoretical and empirical basis perform a comparative analysis of the budget deficit in EU countries and candidates for membership in the EU, to rank the 34 countries according to the criteria of public finances and to show the causality between the candidate countries for membership of the EU and EU member states.