Foreign debt is becoming an increasingly significant problem in modern global political relations. Its disproportional growth in regards to GDP has created a highly unfavourable macroeconomic situation in economically advanced countries such as the USA. Analysis of economically developed countries of the OECD has proved a constant growth in foreign debt, especially in periods of financial crisis. The ratio of foreign debt in the GDP of the USA has doubled in regards to the year 1966. The EU has an adequate legal framework to control macroeconomic imbalance, however the Maastricht criteria of fiscal convergence are not being implemented. An analysis was conducted for the member-states of the EU using polynomial regression that suggests a rising trend for all member-states with the exception of Hungary, Poland and Germany. By calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient a statistically significant relationship was identified between the public debt-to-GDP ratio and the unemployment rate. The main thesis of the paper is that in the current conditions of very liberal movement of capital, an irrationally high foreign debt was created while ignoring the existing legal framework that monitors fiscal policy.