Editorial: Economic growth and stability in the European Union

摘要

The idea of developing a special issue on the efforts towards stability and economic growth in the European Union (EU) emerged from respective discussions that took place at the 6th International Conference on International Business on 21-24 May 2015. The fragile economic recovery following the global financial and economic crisis, and the climaxing refugee and migrant crisis, are an example of the issues that endanger stability in the EU and where diplomacy - and particularly economic diplomacy - is the main tool to confront them. Economic diplomacy has proven to be an efficient tool to politicians for the management of economic crises (Dragan, 2014) and security issues (Hazakis and Chailis, 2013; Turvey, 2014), and a useful instrument for understanding international developments such as the involvement of supranational organisations (e.g., the International Monetary Fund) in economic crises (Bayne, 2012; Papadopoulos and Vlachos, 2015).