The Bulgarian government considers that joining the eurozone does not give any advantage to the country and in fact will involve costs and risks.
The poorest country of the European Union, Bulgaria, has decided against joining the Eurozone, given the current economic and financial crisis, and above all due to the need to comply with all the technical criteria.
The government says that it does not find any advantage in joining the euro, on the contrary, that it only sees costs and too many risks. The current currency of Bulgaria is the Lev.
Last year Bulgaria reduced its budget deficit to 2.1% of GDP, after cutting pensions and public sector salaries. Now the Bulgarian currency is a strong currency.
In a statement made a few days ago to the Wall Street Journal, the finance minister Simeon Djankov said that it was too risky to enter the Eurozone because it was still not clear what the regulations would be nor what would happen within a year or two. The prime minister Boyko Borisov has confirmed in the capital Sofia that the decision of the Bulgarian government to enter the Euro “has been frozen indefinitely”.
Bulgaria was forecast to enter the euro on the 1st of January 2013, according to an agreement which was reached in 2010 but by which some months ago was evident would not come into effect.
Even so the Euro coins with the national symbol on the reverse have already been prepared. In fact there would have been an important discussion since it would be the first country to use the Cyrillic alphabet which would enter the single currency, and therefore an additional line would have to be added to the word Euro, which on all current notes appears in the Latin and Greek alphabets.
It also remains unclear whether Latvia and Lithuania will join the Euro, these countries prefer to wait to see how the economic situation will work out.
This article first appeared in Catalan on the Catalan news site Vilaweb.cat and appears here in translation with permission.