Slovakia joins the Euro

Fifteen has become sixteen. Slovakia joined the Euro Area on January 1st - dropping the national currency, the koruna, 16 years after the former Czechoslovak federation split amicably in 1993 and switching to the Euro at an agreed exchange rate of 30.126 korunas per euro.

Many economists regard this change-over exchange rate as favourable to the Slovakians - the government has wanted to enter at a relatively high level to provide a boost to the spending power of Slovakians in European markets and as a discipline against a return of high inflation.

The country has a population of 5.4 million and its £100bn annual GDP barely registers compared to that of Germany, France, Italy or Spain - Slovakia is the first central European country to achieve membership of the single currency and it is also the poorest nation inside the currency union with a per capita income of only 70 per cent of the European Union average.

For Slovakia one of the major reasons for joining the Euro is to bring about greater exchange rate stability - the country is the 3rd largest car manufacturer in central Europe and has introduced many labour market and fiscal reforms designed to make the economy more attractive to inflows of foreign direct investment.

Slovakia is the 4th country of the ten that joined the EU in May 2004 to have taken the step towards deeper economic integration. Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus are already members of the Euro Area. Poland and Hungary are considering 2012 as a possible entry date and the Czech Republic (long regarded as a well placed country to take the leap) is now having second thoughts.

In 2005, prior to joining the Euro Slovakia entered the semi-fixed exchange rate mechanism known as ERM-2 and since then there have been two revaluations of the crown’s parity rate within the pre-euro currency grid. The last one came in the early summer of 2008 when the Slovakian central bank revalued the krona (increasing its value against the Euro) in a bid to reduce inflationary pressures and keep the economy in line with the inflation rate of the Euro Area.

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