In this thesis we study the rigid limit of N = 2 supergravity and we perform a model-independent analysis of the supersymmetry breaking terms arising from a gauged N = 2 supergravity spontaneously broken to N = 1. We find that at least when no visible hypermultiplet is present, the global N = 2 theory is softly broken by N = 1 supersymmetric soft terms.