EU RESILIENCE TO ECONOMIC CRISIS: IS THE APPLICABILITY OF RESILIENCE CONCEPT REALISTIC?

The economic crisis the world has faced since 2007 has had devastating effects on many regions to various degrees. How regions respond to economic shock depends on regional economic structure and performance, administrative capacity, resources, human capital, social capital, and other factors, and is perceived as resilience: the ability of a regional economy to withstand, absorb, or overcome an external economic stress. In the context of the economic crisis is often mentioned concept of resilience. Despite the notion of 'resilience' has recently risen to prominence in several disciplines, and has also entered policy discourse. Yet, the meaning and relevance of the concept are far from settled matters. Because one of the future strategic goals for the European Union is fostering its resilience, we studied the performance of European Union in the pre- and post-crisis period in order to assess the effects of the economic crisis. The results have revealed differences among selected groups of countries as well as some country-specific characteristics of the response that can generally be seen in the weaker performance of some countries.