A 20 lev banknote sits in a change dish on a snack kiosk counter in Sofia.A 20 lev banknote sits in a change dish on a snack kiosk counter in Sofia.Bulgaria’s efforts to set itself on a firm path to adopt the euro single currency have entered the “final stretch,” its central bank chief said.“Bulgaria is really very close to a strategic breakthrough on its path of European integration,” Bulgarian National Bank Governor Dimitar Radev said Tuesday at a conference in Sofia, the country’s capital.
As of October 2019, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov's target was to enter the ERM II by April 2020.On 30 April 2020, Bulgaria officially submitted documents to the European Central Bank to apply to join ERM II, the first step to introduce the euro.Bulgaria met 2 out of the 5 criteria in the last convergence report published by the Because the lev is pegged to the euro at a fixed exchange rate, it can be argued that Bulgaria is already a de facto member of the euro area insofar that it cannot pursue an independent monetary policy and is therefore bound by the monetary policy and interest rate decisions of the European Central Bank (ECB) without having a say. Euro adoption in Central and Eastern European countries would be positive for their sovereign creditworthiness, according to ratings agency Fitch.
Bulgaria's inflation in the 12 months from April 2007 to March 2008 reached 9.4%, well above the reference value limit at 3.2%. Georgieva said the European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde “sees very positively” Bulgaria’s push for eurozone entry and told her at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “it seems Bulgarian would soon be spoken in my hall where eurozone meetings take place”. Georgieva, who is of Bulgarian origin, said eurozone entry will be beneficial for the country and provide more monetary security and shield it from global uncertainty.
The other four existing eastern members are Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia.The ECB will set a base rate for the conversion of Croatia’s kuna and Bulgaria’s lev into euros as soon as Friday, the people said. Assuming the peg holds without any market pressure for at least two years, the two countries could then formally join the euro area.A third official cautioned that the eventual adoption of the euro is a political decision, and tied to a series of criteria of which a smooth peg to ERM-2 is only a part.
It was expected to reach 11% of GDP in 2009.A 2008 analysis said that Bulgaria would not be able to join the eurozone earlier than 2015 due to the high inflation and the repercussions of the global In all of the three latest annual assessment reports, Bulgaria managed to comply with four out of the five economic convergence criteria for euro adoption, only failing to comply with the criteria requiring the currency of the state to have been a stable ERM-II member for a minimum of two years.While the CVM reforms are mentioned, and progress in judicial reform and organised crime is expected, leaving the CVM is not a precondition. Joining the pre-euro exchange-rate mechanism will mean that “things are becoming pretty much irreversible.”The Balkan country has kept its finances stable in a bid to join the euro-area waiting room known as ERM-2, along with the bloc’s banking union, by end-April. A comprehensive assessment at six Bulgarian lenders by the ECB last year found capital shortfalls at two locally owned banks, but both First Investment Bank 5F4.BB and Investbank has since announced plans to raise their capital.
Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova, Editing by William MacleanFILE PHOTO: IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva attends a news conference ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 20, 2020. Bulgaria's plans to enter the eurozone's waiting room this spring and adopt the euro currency in 2023 are "completely foreseeable", the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday. A euro currency symbol sits on display in the visitor centre at the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt.A euro currency symbol sits on display in the visitor centre at the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt.Croatia and Bulgaria are set for approval to join the waiting room to adopt the euro in what would be the first step toward expanding the currency union since 2015.The decision to allow the two eastern European countries into what’s known as ERM-2 is likely to be taken by euro-region finance ministers meeting Thursday and Friday, according to people familiar with the situation. The two European Union nations were admitted into …