International investment position of new EU member states – the experience of integration and crisis

Foreign financing of the economy is one of the important issues discussed in the social and economic debates. On one hand, transition economies, due to the shortage of domestic accumulation, were forced to co-finance their development with foreign capital, on the other hand, excessive involvement of foreign capital may increase the vulnerability to financial crises. In particular, recent financial crisis has shown the sensitivity of the EU economies to financial shocks and highlighted the need to monitoring the scale of external imbalances. The aim of the article is to examine the level of security of financing economies of the new EU countries with foreign capital, by analyzing the scale and structure of their International Investment Position and Foreign Debt. The study, covering the period 2004–2013, was based on the data derived from Eurostat.