Did the PIIGS Already Fly? A Retrospective Study of the European Economy Using Data Mining Techniques

The term PIIGS was used to refer to five countries in Europe, respectively Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. This nomenclature was created due to the fact that they shared similar economic and financial contexts and challenges during the 2008 financial crisis. These countries were affected by the reduction of investor confidence regarding the payment of their debts, which resulted in a significant increase in the cost of the respective debts. sovereign debts. Lack of access to adequate finance has led to bailout programs and austerity measures imposed by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. This article focuses on the analysis of the economic and financial situation of the countries in question, in order to understand whether they have evolved in the face of that period. Groupings were created in order to classify the main characteristics of each group, trying to identify which European countries are in each one and, in particular, the positioning of the countries previously identified as PIIGS and their meaning. The 2008 PIIGS countries were distributed across three of the six clusters formed. The analysis of results referring to 2021 allowed to observe a significant improvement among the PIIGS countries, verifying that the name PIIGS no longer applies to the economic and financial situation of these countries. Even so, the stability of these countries\u27 economies still needs to be improved so that they can better respond to ongoing challenges such as pandemics and wars