Toward Successful Euro Adoption in Romania

Abstract

The recent EU enlargement process brings in attention the next obvious step, entering the European Monetary Union. For all the ten new EU countries, adopting euro as national currency seemed to be, at least until very recent, a priority objective, fact suggested by the rush in entering the EMS II system. The enlargement is an opportunity to evaluate the Maastricht criteria for adopting the single currency. In the recent years, it appeared more often the question if the (nominal) convergence criteria are enough for the new members, taking into account the gap between them and the other 15 EU members, or in all the countries, voluntarily, must evaluate and take into account some real convergence criteria. Even if the euro adoption is still far away for Romania, the controversy about nominal and real convergence is actual and we must concentrate in the next few years mainly in the catching-up process, and we must expect, before the euro adoption (even if we could fulfill the Maastricht criteria before), until we will reach the real convergence, for avoiding the asymmetric shocks.