Still Wanting to See Eastern Europe Join Euro Zone

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E.Europe central bankers still keen on euro (via AFP)

By Staff Reporter

AFP Global Edition

Countries in central and eastern Europe, including Hungary, still want to join the euro despite the current debt crisis, central bankers in the region told a conference Wednesday. “People say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Boris Vujcic, deputy head of Croatia’s central bank, told the Euromoney Central and Eastern European Forum in Vienna.

“That is my hope — that the eurozone will be stronger, that it will be built on more solid ground, that the missing links will be there by that time. If that is so, in 2013, I think that for Croatia the choice is very easy.
“We are so deeply involved and integrated in the financial sector and the real sector that there is very very little doubt that (adopting the euro) is the right choice.”

Croatia signed an EU accession treaty last month, paving the way for it to join the 27-nation bloc — but not the troubled 17-country eurozone — on July 1, 2013. Members of the EU, except Britain and Denmark which have opt-outs, are all meant to adopt the euro eventually. In 2007, Slovenia became the first ex-communist state to do so, followed by Slovakia in 2009.

EU member Hungary’s central bank chief Andras Simor said that his country’s economy was more closely integrated with the core countries in the eurozone than are certain members on its periphery. “In practical terms we are fully convinced that the eurozone forms an optimum currency zone with Hungary. There are lots of economic reasons to join,” Simor told the Vienna conference.