In this thesis, the performance of 220 open-end domestic equity mutual funds of european countries (from 'weak' and 'strong' economies) is analyzed for an eight- year period from 1st January 2004 until 31st December 2011, which is then split in two four-year sub periods in order to examine their performance prior to the global financial crisis and after its burst in 2008. In order to compare the mutual funds' performance to that of each country's market, it used as benchmarks the countries' main stock indices. It used weekly net asset values (NAV) to calculate logarithmic returns and then it applied the following performance measures: Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, Jensen's alpha, Treynor and Mazuy model, Information ratio, risk- adjusted performance measure (RAP), market risk-adjusted performance measure (MRAP) and Sortino ratio. Based on the Sharpe and the Treynor ratio, most mutual funds underperformed the market after the burst of the crisis. No mutual fund reported abnormal returns and for approximately half of them, fund managers did not report timing abilities while even when they did they negatively affected the funds' returns. Information ratio indicated that only Italian fund managers had stock picking abilities. Finally, RAP, MRAP and Sortino ratio indicated deterioration of the funds' performance after the crisis.