Bulgaria will introduce January 1, 2025 as the target date for adopting the euro, according to a draft published on the government’s website, Novinite reported, citing Agerpres.

Bulgaria has decided to join the Eurozone from 2025Photo: Rochu2008 | Dreamstime.com

The change was made in the resolution of the Council of Ministers on the establishment of the Coordinating Council for the preparation of the country’s entry into the Eurozone, and the deadline for sending options ended yesterday evening.

In February, Finance Minister Rositsa Velkova announced that Bulgaria had abandoned the January 2024 target date for adopting the euro. “We have not fulfilled our obligations regarding joining the euro zone, and we must fulfill the inflation criteria,” Rossitsa Velkova told journalists at the time.

At the end of 2022, Bulgaria’s harmonized inflation index rose to 14.3% year-on-year, the eighth highest annual inflation rate in the EU bloc. One of the criteria for joining the euro zone established by the Maastricht Treaty, ratified by all EU member states in 1993, is price stability. In particular, the average level of inflation (calculated by the harmonized index of consumer prices) for the last 12 months should not exceed by more than 1.5 percentage points (ie, the arithmetic average of the inflation rates) of the member countries with the best indicators in terms of price stability. In addition, this evolution must be sustainable.

The current Bulgarian parliament is rapidly passing key laws that must be completed before the introduction of the euro. In addition, this week the European Central Bank (ECB) gave a positive assessment of the new law on the National Bank of Bulgaria, and technical recommendations will be discussed with the Ministry of Finance before the final texts are submitted to the government and parliament for approval.

The law should enter into force when Bulgaria becomes a member of the eurozone.

In the government’s program for the period June 2023 – December 2024, January 1, 2025 is indicated as the approximate date of the country’s entry into the Eurozone.

Bulgaria has been a member of the European Union since 2007.

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