In cooperation with DG Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission, the European journalism Centre is organising a three-day information briefing specifically tailored for journalists coming from the new EU Member States preparing to adopt the single currency.

The briefing will take place from the 13 to 15 May 2009 in Brussels and will focus on the Euro Area enlargement, the first 10 years of the European Monetary Union and the latest developments concerning the European single currency.

What are the economic challenges for the new EU Member States? What is the role for the Europe’s single currency in its second decade? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed by the European Commission's and independent experts.

In accordance with the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, all new members of the EU are eligible to join the European single currency.

An accession country that plans to join the Union must align many aspects of its society – social, economic and political – with those of EU Member States.
Much of this alignment is aimed at ensuring that an accession country can operate successfully within the Union’s single market for goods, services, capital and labour.

Adopting the euro and joining the euro area is a process of much closer economic integration with the other euro-area Member States and demands extensive preparations; in particular it requires economic and legal convergence.

The EU monetary chiefs called the euro "one of the greatest success stories of European integration" saying that it had allowed the countries using it to react effectively to the global crisis.

The euro has been used in 12 of 15 European Union (EU) countries since January 2002. At the time, Sweden, Denmark and Britain were the only EU members that did not adopt the currency. The European Central Bank has set a fiscal deficit limit of 3.0 per cent to allow other member nations to adopt the euro.

Slovenia began using the currency in 2007. Cyprus and Malta adopted the euro the next year.

As the euro celebrates its tenth anniversary, Slovakia has become the sixteenth member after joining the zone on 1 January 2009. The number of EU citizens sharing the euro now stands at 329 million.

Print page