The reason why emphasis was placed on just one of its sides, in particular on the direction of impulses flowing from balance to growth, is that Slovakia, endeavouring to accede to the EU, has a transition economy with strong imbalance creating factors and a poorly effective balance creating mechanism. Overall, it can be said that the purpose of the relationship between growth and balance, rid of any bias, is undoubtedly economic growth ensuring the gradual modernisation of the Slovak economy as a basis for the economic convergence of Slovakia to EU countries understood in terms of quality.

The cycles of weaker and stronger macroeconomic balance are typical even for countries that joined the EU in the previous rounds of enlargement. However, it cannot be confirmed whether EU accession in itself has clearly contributed to the (de)stabilisation of macroeconomic development in the short- or medium run. It is not the integration itself, but rather the current internal characteristics of the functioning of the Slovak economy that are the main risk factors threatening its stability. The chronic inclination toward imbalance caused by the insufficient level of competitiveness has been, on a number of occasions, eliminated only temporarily through various packages of stabilisation measures. The high intermediate consumption and import intensity embedded in production makes the economy vulnerable. This is further amplified by the inclination of public finance to reproduce deficits and debts. Even after several attempts to achieve macroeconomic stabilisation, we cannot say it has an enduringly satisfactory state.

The final stage of preparations for accession to the EU must therefore be a phase of prudent fiscal policy combined with an effort to reform the problematic areas of the public sector. Along with the elimination of other deformations of the market environment, this should lead to the creation of conditions enabling the Slovak economy to behave as a standard market economy and thus eliminate the specific transformation factors affecting the cycles of balance fluctuation. The maintenance of permanently high amount of investments in the Slovak economy can be regarded as its comparative advantage helping to preserve the long-term high-rate GDP growth. Compared with other transition economies, the investment intensity of economic growth in Slovakia reached a satisfactory level on the whole. It was also lower than the average in the EU-15 and in its south wing. In 1993-2000 Slovakia's accumulation resources were extended by foreign resources to a greater extent than in other transitive economies.

This on the one hand strengthened Slovakia's investment potential, but on the other hand endangered its macroeconomic stability, because, in particular before 1998 inclusively, loans (to a substantial extent state-guaranteed loans) prevailed over foreign direct investment in foreign resources. One serious issue is the impact of EU accession on developments in the labour market. The analysis of trends present in it indicates that forces already exist in the Slovak transforming economy, which, in the medium run (after the current downturn of the world economy is overcome), i.e. by the time of Slovakia's potential accession to the EU, will be able to make a more permanent turn in the so far negative development in employment and unemployment. Fiscal policy was marked by imbalance in public finance in the monitored period. In 1996-1998 this was a result of the exaggerated effort to support economic growth directly and in 1999-2001 this was a result of the expenditure on the restructuring of the banking sector, while reforms in the healthcare, social security and education sectors progressed inadequately. The developments in public finance in 2002 show that its reform has not reached a state that would ensure its enduring positive impact on macroeconomic stability. Even though the lagging behind of institutional reforms (typical for the stages of transformation that have taken place so far) has made it possible to achieve short-term positive results in monetary developments, this was at the cost of greater long-term problems and decrease in the Slovak crown's exchange rate.