Microfinance in Europe

Abstract

Microfinance is often considered as the most useful and effective tool in the fight against global poverty. Moreover, microfinance can be used to support the development of self-employment and micro-enterprises in European countries. It has a double impact: an economic impact as it allows the creation of income generating activities and a social impact as it contributes to financial inclusion and therefore to the social inclusion of societies. Because of financial crisis, which was the crisis of values as well, we could observe negative impact on trust level to financial institutions. This study focuses on the problem of impact microfinance on recovery confidence to financial institutions among their clients. The main purpose of the article was to present the idea of microfinance and it socio-economical profile as a part of European policies on background of crisis of confidence to financial institutions. The chapter is ended by the microfinance SWOT analysis, which characterize prospects and threats as well. To obtain main objective were used: a descriptive method, a comparative method and a literature analysis method.