Florin Georgescu, first deputy governor of the Romanian National Bank, said that Romania will set another deadline for the introduction of the euro by 2029, after extending previous deadlines several times.
A second central bank man, Medifax news agency, said that his country has so far missed all opportunities to join the eurozone, so it is expected that the next report on the introduction of the single currency will include 2029 as the last deadline.
Romania joined the European Union on January 1, 2007. Since then, there have been several deadlines, the first of which was officially 2014, and this was later postponed to 2019 and then to 2024. According to Georgescu, Bucharest will not be able to meet this deadline either. , because it does not currently meet the conditions for accession.
He believed that between 2015 and 2017, it was possible to apply for accession to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM-II), where the country fulfilled the conditions for accession. Now, however, the target is moving farther and farther. Romania’s general government deficit was 9.2 percent of GDP last year, and inflation this year is expected to be 7 percent, MTI wrote.
Florin Georgescu noted that five of the eleven former socialist countries were already members of the eurozone, and two others, Bulgaria and Croatia, entered the eurozone lobby last year.