The speed the present world changes, is at least impressive. During the last decade the global socio-economic environment faced major adjustments dictated by globalisation, technological progress and political interests. The European Union seems to fail in keeping up with the changing environment. Thus, if in 2007 the European Union represented 30.7% of the global nominal GDP, then in 2016 it accounted only for 21.7% (World Bank). The economic positions of the European Union have declined much as compared to the rest of the world the fact which inevitably leads to the decrease of the community’s political and economic strength. The main scope of the present paper is to assess the extent to which the economic security of the European Union has changed in the period of 2007-2017. At the same time, it has been proposed to identify the main subversive factors which affected the economic security of the European Union in the period of 2007-2017 and threaten the future perspectives of the Union. The results reached by the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis explicitly point out that economic security is decreasing and the identified threats menace the future existence of the European Union.

Entrepreneurship is the driving force of economic development and progress. A successful state, first of all, provides favourable conditions motivating the businesses to grow and flourish. Presently, the European Union is developing unevenly with multiple economic misbalances across the community, the West and the North being more competitive than the South and the East. The aim of the present research is to examine the framework of interdependence between the degree to which the governance quality and economic freedom in the European Union are supporting entrepreneurial activities and the performance of the community in terms of entrepreneurial innovation. The results reached through applying both qualitative and quantitative analyses show that the interdependence between entrepreneurial innovation and regulatory efficiency is strong for many of the European Union states which is determined by multiple factors including the institutional and economic ones. Also, the present paper underlines the importance of the proper regulatory framework for the efficient development of business innovation. The future research on this matter could consider in depth the impact of socio-cultural environment, its influence on the quality of governance and the impact of both upon the European entrepreneurial innovation.

The present research comes to comprehensively analyse the path towards a confident Europe both in the regional and global environment by considering the necessity of European foreign policy consolidation as an imminent premise to enhanced European economic security & competitiveness. Despite of multiple competing political and economic interests, socio-cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, and historical animosities, the only choice of the European Union's nations to maintain and improve their current regional and global politico-economic positions resides in their capacity to act jointly through a unique representation. Accordingly, the results of the present research explicitly underline the idea that: as long as the “influence” centre of the European Union will be dispersed among national governments, each of them promoting individual interests contrary to the groups’ ones, the community as an integrational block will face important difficulties in defending its regional and global positions. The qualitative analysis undertaken highlights the idea that the European Union in the present form and institutional arrangements is not able to provide feasible and efficient solutions to the current and future challenges. This fact can be explicitly noted in the area of foreign affairs where the dualism between national and supranational bodies makes the European Union to falter on key directions including the Middle East, Eastern Partnership, the Russian Federation, and Turkey as well as on the global arena.

The goal of the present paper is to demonstrate whether the varying performance of the European Union states in terms of business and entrepreneurial attractiveness and activity is diminishing the level of overall economic security. Accordingly, the particular objectives which are to be achieved include: firstly, structuring the EU countries by performance groups in terms of economic efficiency; secondly, development of an innovative approach through which it can be analysed the dynamics and present level of economic security across the identified groups; and thirdly, analysis of interdependence between the selected indicators within the developed approach and, as result, suggestion of relevant policy measures at the level of the European Union. The methodology applied to reach the goal and objectives of the research includes a throughout quantitative analysis of data regarding the discrepancies in the European Union in terms of innovation output, resource productivity, employees’ salary, business R&D expenditure, international investment positions, gross fixed capital formation, exports, energy efficiency and unemployment. The results reached expressively underline that the level of discrepancies among the performance groups in the European Union is high, these differences growing in the areas of business and entrepreneurial performance.

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