European Commission President Juncker has proposed new measures to help countries introduce the common currency.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker presented a plan for deepening the European economic and monetary union. “A roof should be repaired while the sun shines,” said Juncker while describing a programme which includes a financial instrument which could be very interesting for Croatia, reports tportal.hr on December 10, 2017.
Juncker’s new plan contains four major initiatives that are mainly related to eurozone countries, but the third initiative, which speaks of communication on new budgetary instruments for the stability of the eurozone area, focuses on countries like Croatia which are in a tentative process of introducing the euro.
The European Commission intends to develop a particular convergence instrument for member states that are in the process of introducing the euro. In other words, Europe will do its utmost to help such countries adopt the euro as soon as possible, which is important given that the Croatian government and the Croatian National Bank announced last month they would push for the swiftest possible introduction of the common European currency.
How exactly will the Commission help and how much it will invest for Croatia to introduce the euro as soon as possible is not yet known. Finance Minister Zdravko Marić said that the instrument was still in the planning phase. “It has not yet been defined. Just the other day, I was at a meeting of the Eurogroup, and we participated in the talks, but the details are not yet known. These issues will be addressed next year. It is being done as we speak,” said Marić, adding there was no indication of how the instrument would be ultimately designed.
The office of the European Commission in Zagreb also did not define the aim of new measures, adding just that the new instruments would not force the introduction of the euro on countries which do not want it, but it was crucial that the introduction of the euro in new member states was supported by strong economies. In other words, without a strong, robust economy, there is no introduction of the euro. The reason is that the EU does not want a repeat of the 2008 crisis when Greece’s bankruptcy almost brought eurozone down to its knees.
“For the eurozone to function, the member states that are introducing the euro must achieve a certain level of economic resilience to more effectively absorb shocks and recover more quickly from them,” the European Commission said. They noted that the EC’s support would depend on the country’s goodwill and that the Maastricht criteria remained the only requirement for the introduction of the euro.
Translated from tportal.hr.
