THE EU MEMBERSHIP AND ITS EFFECTS ON OWNERSHIP OF BANKING SYSTEM: THE CASE OF THREE SOUTH EAST EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of membership on a country in EU on the ownership of its banking system. The ownership of a banking system is important for a country. A growing number of studies provide empirical evidence that well operation of financial systems accelerates long-run economic growth by allocating funds to more productive investments than poorly developed financial systems. So, the foreign ownership of banking system, if the owners are from more developed economies, through know how can influence for greater financial intermediacy and for better allocation of resources, too. Also if the owners are global systemically important financial institution they can provide financial support and can make a bank competitive advantage with cheap credit lines. The down side is that all the decisions are taken on group level and the subsidiary can be affected of strategy for deleveraging or reduced support although the driver is the economic conditions of the mother company. In order to evaluate the impact of the EU membership, this paper will compare the ownership of the banking systems in Romania and Bulgaria before and after the EU accession. Also, the analysis will include the ownership of Macedonian banking system, and having in mind the changes in the other two sample countries, will be assessed the impact of EU membership on the ownership of the banking system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]