Farewell to the Kuna. Holidaying in Croatia With Euro This Year
A s of 1 January 2023, Croatia has joined the other nineteen Economic and Currency Union EU members. While the eurozone keeps expanding to the east and south, its centre of gravity is not necessarily following suit.
Accepting Croatia as part of the currency union changes little in terms of the eurozone’s economic potential. The number of people using euro banknotes and coins has now increased by approximately 4 million to 346.7 million. Croatia’s annual Gross Domestic Product totals around EUR 60 billion. The eurozone’s economy has the capacity to grow by that amount within under one month. While the Governing Council of the European Central Bank - the body responsible for making decisions concerning interest rates in the eurozone - has just gained an additional vote, under the current voting principles the importance of a new member state is limited.
European Union member states with a joint population of approximately 100 million and accounting for 15 percent of the EU’s GDP will now remain outside the eurozone.
Eurozone Expansion Outlook
Having negotiated the opt-out clause many years ago, Denmark is now the only state exempt from the responsibility of adopting the common currency. This leaves seven states: Sweden, and six countries of the former Eastern bloc who had accessed to the European Union over the years 2004-2007. While all have pledged to replace their national currencies with the euro, the actual conversion dates remain an unknown.
Bulgaria is the closest to Monetary Union doors, the country having decided to peg its currency rigidly originally to the deutschmark, then to the euro back in the late 1990s. The government intends to replace the lev with the euro in early 2024.
While the prospect of adopting a common currency is welcomed with open arms by the business community, recent surveys have proven that Bulgarian nationals are expressing a number of concerns. It may come as something of a surprise that a considerable part of society is fearing a euro-related rise in inflation; when currency governance and pegging the lev to the deutschmark was introduced in 1997, the actual purpose was that of putting the brakes on hyperinflation.
Joining the eurozone is a major economic policy objective for Romania. Yet the prospect is periodically stalling. In the mid-2010s, Romania had hoped to be able to convert to the euro by 2019, the 2024 date mentioned at a later stage. Today, the Romanians are anticipating the ability to pay in common currency by the late 2020s.
In other non-eurozone countries, the euro does not seem to be a political focus, prevailing approaches closely resembling the one favoured in Poland: a state’s own currency is the key manifestation of sovereignty, and potentially an essential economic policy instrument. The political faction supporting the euro sees conversion chiefly as a stepping stone to closer integration within the European Union. ©℗
Materiał chroniony prawem autorskim - wszelkie prawa zastrzeżone.
Dalsze rozpowszechnianie artykułu za zgodą wydawcy INFOR PL S.A. Kup licencję.