Also, the addition of Bulgaria means it's almost possible to travel from Spain to Greece entirely through the Eurozone, with only a thin sliver of Serbia or Macedonia in the way. (Assuming we include Montenegro and Kosovo in the Eurozone: technically they aren't, but for all practical purposes they are.)
It'll also be interesting to see who's next. Czechia is not far off but doesn't seem to be in a hurry, while Romania wants in but still seems to be a ways off. Poland and Hungary will stay outside unless there are major political changes.
Historically the biggest benefit that was sold as something to outweigh this was a claim that "inflation will be low" and big inflation spikes are impossible. This came about from the short sighted view that all inflation stems from printing money and by giving up our control over it to somebody else we somehow "protect ourselves". This was proven wrong during covid when inflation was vastly different in let's say Latvia and Germany despite sharing a currency.
So what is the bottom line? Is euro all bad? No, it is very useful so we have a common currency in the euro zone that is not controlled from across the ocean. This is a huge benefit, but the same benefit is achieved by having it be a second currency like it is now in Poland rather than the only currency. (you can pay in euros in almost everywhere if you prefer as well as get it from cash machines etc)
Being in the EU without using the Euro has been pretty good for Poland.
That's an interesting perspective. From what I see in the news, the EU isn't as happy with the outcome.
Once Poland becomes more prosperous and its growth rate slows, it would make sense for it to move to the euro. It just doesn't now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_...
The inability to set monetary policy is a strong argument. Just ask Greece (and Spain):
That's one part of it. The other part is that the country had just as much human capital and economic potential as Western European states, but was held back artificially by the Partitions, WW2, the Soviet Union, and the lack of Marshall Plan investment that Western Europe received.
Sorry, but the narrative of "Poland is only doing well because the EU is helping" (of which German companies are benefitting from tremendously) is a historically narrow way to analyze the situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_material_losses_during_...
But if we talk about Polish-Bulgarian exchanges: Those two countries actually have more or less the same numbers of Euro spent on import and export between each other. Bulgaria doubled export to Poland in just 2 years. Food products are important, but Bulgaria also exports to Poland many metals, mechanical and electrical devices, pharmaceuticals...
The biggest Polish import from Bulgaria in 2023 were almost a billion Euro on guns and ammunition. "Seeds and oily fruits" (whatever is the correct translation) were 20x less than that.
This is the point. Germany managed to set up a really independent central bank (which is a non- democratic, bureaucratic, etc… thingy) and inflation was at the target for decades. Italy, France, etc… didn’t, and inflation was 2-3 point above target and above the German levels. So they joined the Euro, which has a governance very similar to the Deutsche Mark.
To this day, inflation in European countries outside the Eurozone is higher.
And Germany being overzealous in fiscal and monetary policy has stagnated growth and limited policy options. Look at all the rigmarole that had to be done so that Germany could start considering military spending to deal with the new global situation.
(Heck, if Republicans would actually be interested in fiscal discipline, perhaps they should move to Germany.)
German fiscal discipline is a tool of strategic independence. It started in ‘49 when they knew they would eventually had to reabsorb East Germany. Today it allows them to re-arm without having to ask permission.
Over the past 20 years, Germany grew more than Italy, France and the UK.
This is my argument exactly. A seat gives a certain small amount if influence, the resulting policy will be an approximation of what is best for everyone. This may be pretty far from what is best for a developing country with fast growth if the majority is well developed countries with low growth.
Imagine you and your neighbour decide to pool your money and invest together. He is 65 years old and has 50k EUR, you are 21 years old and you have 1k. He prefers to put his money in a bank savings acct that will allow him to withdraw anytime (he's retiring soon) and he doesn't want any risk. You on the other hand don't mind risk at all, but you need a high rate of return (stocks would be good for you, maybe of the more "adventurous" kind).
If you pool your money he will have much more to say so you end up maybe with a 6 months term savings deposit to get a little more gain. You're both unhappy because that is not enough profit to you and it still locks up his money preventing him from choosing an early retirement. Compromises sometimes work for both sides, sometimes they don't work for anyone...
>You'd also get cheaper money (think mortgage rates going from ~7% (current rates in Poland) to less than 4% (current rates in Slovakia)).
You can get Euro denominated mortgages in Poland as well. As well as Swiss Frank, Dollar etc. A country does not have to get rid of its currency for people to enjoy lower interest rates in other currencies.
You can make an argument if you earn in PLN and take a mortgage in EUR it exposes you to the currency risk and it does. It is your personal choice. But there are plenty of jobs (usually higher paying) that pay a set amount of EUR or USD and it's often these kinds of people for whom these mortgages make sense.
We even have a long running scandal involving almost a million of people that got Swiss Frank mortgages over a decade ago that had interest rates below 1% and the banks structured these deals in such a way they made a killing on exchange commission. Basically people didn't realise they had to pay in PLN and the mortgage provider would convert to CHF applying their exorbitant conversion rates. There was no way to just pay in CHF. But this story is over a decade old and people have learned the lesson.
The point is that all of the countries in the EU are well developed countries with similar growth and closely tied economies. The example you have given would be more accurate if you'd compare a 65yr old with 50k savings and a 55yr old with 40k savings. What would be the (ideal) alternative? Having custom currency with policy tailored for each region? Each industry? Each person? Sometimes there's more value in unity.
> You can get Euro denominated mortgages in Poland as well.
Have you tried getting one? I did. The bank deduces 10-15% from your income due to currency risk when calculating interest rate and max loan amount. There are plenty of folks working abroad and earning EUR instead of local currency. Ask them about their opinion on this.
I am strongly pro-euro. Why? Because again, economic consequences are way smaller than most people think, and it's about symbolism. It's about slowly marching towards European Federation instead of NIMBYism that prevents EU from actually living up to its full potential. Imagine a world where the entire European continent is a single political entity - we'd be unquestionable superpower. But no, because "muh independence", and the end result is that we can't do shit on the international stage because we're too busy arguing with each other.
Adopting euro has political consequences, first and foremost, not "symbolical". It is quite sad that people and leaders in our country mostly conflate politics with symbols and gestures, because that is causing us to be what we are - losers.
Why would that be a good thing?
> In time things get more expensive much faster in countries that grow faster while incomes stay the same. This is a huge negative and this is on top of price increases happening on "day 1" due to rounding up during conversion.
Could you perhaps expand on this effect, ideally in a mechanistic manner, or point me towards a source that explains the influencing factors and outcomes? I am trying to understand the different processes at hand.
I thought the basic explanation about money supply was sufficient, but I can try expanding on this.
A typical medium sized country having its own language that has had its own currency for a long time is much more internally economically integrated than externally. We can simplify this by saying huge majority of businesses take part in economic activity within the country, not outside.
This gives us some basis to consider it in separation to it's neighbours even if they are in a single market (smaller countries have less separation, bigger countries more, many factors influence the depth of separation but it exists strongly in countries like Poland).
So this is why it makes sense to talk in terms of money supply in terms of this "island" of economic activity regardless if it has its own currency or shares another.
The we have certain amount of GDP growth each year. More goods and services are produced each year. But simplifying, let's say you and your neighbor are on an island and you have 52 tokens with witch you trade. You catch fish and he works in a field of wheat. You pay him 52 tokens over the course of the year for his wheat and likewise he pays you the same for the fish (one per week for a price of one token).
Suddenly you find a net on the beach and you don't need to catch the fish with a DIY rod. You can catch 5 fish per week rather than 2 of which you sold 1. Now you have 4 fish per week to sell, but the guy only has 1 token per week. So if you want to sell all your fish you have to drop the price to 0.25. You do double the work (the nets are heavy) you get 4x the fish and yet you get the same tokens and wheat. Not fair. So you don't catch more fish.
This is why we need money supply to grow (or be procured by exports, but let's leave this complex topic for now) if the total of goods and services grows too. Ideally at the same rate or slightly more so goods do not depreciate in price.
I already mentioned one reason why deflation is bad, it demotivates producers from growth. Second reason is many costs are static, so it may send them into bankruptcy if others sell more than them at diminished prices. The third reason can also illustrate why we need some inflation.
The inflation is necessary for people to have an incentive to invest their money rather than stuff them into a mattress. If we have deflation it literally makes sense not to spend your money today, because you will get more goods for it tomorrow. Until everyone does this and prices go so low half of business go bankrupt.
So this is why you need money supply to slightly exceed the GDP growth. This subject can be as simple or as complex as you want. But there are basic truths that work on all levels of complexity. This is one of them.
The euro has benefited countries like Germany a lot but not necessarily all countries.
Prior to the adoption of the euro, the Danish crown was pegged to the D-mark (since about the mid-1980s), because Germany was the biggest export market for Denmark (still is), and thus having a currency that's stable towards what the Germans are using has been good for Danish exports (less sure how relevant that still is). (Sidebar; had the original motivation of Alternative für Deutschland been successful and abandoned the Euro for a return to the D-mark (neumark?), it would have put Denmark in an awkward position.)
The last time I was in Denmark my bank nicely charged me for the conversion despite the coin being fixed to the euro. It is just a money costing machine which adds no value.
Ask Greeks how much they enjoyed ECB involvement.
Germany even without any representation in ECB will have much more to say than other countries. Because in the end it is a real political power that allows anyone to make decisions.
Switzerland can have their own currency, where inflation over 2% is a scandal. Sweden can have their own currency, they produce their own cruisers, submarines, fighter jets, and artillery. Poland kicked out their last baby boom into emigration and now have the same demographic and immigration crisis as geriatric Italy and Germany. They have nuclear power plant company operating with its board receiving executive salaries for fifteen years now and... no nuclear power plants. Accumulated inflation since pre Covid era is 43% and doesn't look to be stopping. Own currency enables enormous fraud and creates class of oligarchs.
In 2022 inflation rate in Poland was 14% compared to 8% in Spain for example.
2024 figure (for Poland) was down to 4%.
Since then the EU is mostly developing in a wrong direction.
The EU Parliament is directly elected. The EU Council is comprised of EU country head of states, which are all directly elected. The EU Council and EU Parliament then elect the EU Comission.
Sounds democratic to me.
The powerful EU Commission being appointed by governments (and again only approved by the Parliament) is a form of executive federalism. This makes the chain of legitimacy longer and longer which is hardly positive for democracy.
The commission is elected by the parliament. This is democratic.
Would it be an improvement if parliament could propose laws and commission members. Maybe. But saying that this makes the EU undemocratic is unreasonable.
It is more of a bureaucratic technocracy with democratic fig leaves. People often attribute competence to technocracies, but that is an illusion.
Also I don't believe you can move up government function to layers above your national government and still call it representative.
In reality the culture and circumstances of parliament members is too far removed from the voters. I also cannot know the other representatives, so my voting decision will always be restricted to a shallow popularity contest. But as explained, this doesn't matter, because the elected representatives cannot implement any agenda.
That’s an odd thing to say when there is a real chance of the commission failing a confidence vote this week. We might end up with a new commission due to the conservatives colluding with the far right to abandon the climate agenda entirely.
This is a very concrete consequence of the voters electing right-wing parliamentarians.
But you said yourself, that there are different lavels of directness. That is the core argument where everyone has different expectations.
What part of the EU and ECB is not democratic?
My experiences in non-Euro, Schengen countries is that all payment terminals offer me the choice to pay in Euro or the local currency. In many cases in tourist areas (of Czechia, Poland, and Bulgaria) I only encountered terminals that asked for payment in Euro.
However, the benefits of a single currency go beyond cash. It's also about understanding prices. You see a sign for coffee and it's 1199 Hungarian Forint -- or it's 14.99 Polish złoty. It's not clear at all what those numbers mean. Sure it's possible to pull out a currency calculator app to see what the rate is today and what it means in euros. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is bigger than a mere inconvenience. It's constant friction on not really understanding what's going on. If those coffee prices were instead 2.99 € vs 3.53 €, you would immediately see that the Polish coffee is 20% more expensive.
--
As for the payment terminals offering to pay in Euro, as others have already noted, that's a scam. There is a hidden fee, usually around 3.5% - 5.0% of your total, that you get charged for this "convenience". Refusing this and paying in the listed currency will mean that your own bank will do the conversion, which is basically always going to be far cheaper.
Unfortunately this currency conversion scam is so lucrative that even big brands engage in it. Amazon for example asks what currency your card is in. If you select some currency other than what this sepecific Amazon's listed prices are in, well, you're in for another juicy hidden fee, this time to Amazon.
Granted, I haven't recently been to any EU country without the Euro, but my main bank charges extortionate conversion fees, 2.sth%, with a ridiculous minimum per transaction.
A few months ago, I've ordered something off Amazon UK (while in the UK) and the conversion they offered was very close to the official GBP / EUR exchange rate, way below my bank's minimum. The price wasn't high, either, on the order of 10 €.
Also in Europe people use the likes of Revolut to set up virtual native currency accounts on the fly (with IBAN) with FX free transactions up to a certain level per month dependent on tier.
It's not about passports, it's about border controls within the area. Before Schengen you would have to wait for hours and hours in a queue at the border. Now that border check doesn't exist anymore. The check doesn't exist regardless of what passport you have, there's just nobody there.
The lack of direct documentation/instructions or link in the terminals to official rules strikes me as horrible ux. You basically just have to be in the know or know who to ask?
In Germany, there was a sliver of time where stores essentially taped a piece of paper to terminals with instructions and big red arrows to select a specific scheme because that would benefit the store (and not cost the consumer extra). It didn't really stick, however. I suspect because it was two extra button presses and the consumer wouldn't notice either way.
When it comes to exchanging cash, avoid currency exchanges at places like airports, tourist hotspots, etc. as they will usually offer worse rates than elsewhere.
Only problem is that there are no deadlines and it's up to the country to make a plan for adopting the euro.
All EU emitted debt goes towards specific projects.
For people themselves, they're not so keen either as they know well adopting euro was abused in other countries to increase prices (and not just round them up a bit). So basically nobody wants it, even if there are a few real benefits of joining, such as potentially lower mortgage rates which are among the highest in the EU).
For certain definitions of "success". The 2010s weren't such a great time:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_area_crisis
The EU isn't as integrated (e.g., labour mobility) as other currency areas, and so problems in one region are harder to fix.
I'm not euroskeptic, but does it even matter in the age of ubiquitous digital payments? IMO SEPA is far more important development than cash itself.
Cost is loss of key economic levers, price increases, and potentially less competitive exports.
I don't think a blanket statement like yours holds. Ot works for Germany (unsurprisingly) but some countries suffered.
It was specifically for Bulgaria, the only EU country to use the Cyrillic alphabet. Eurozone membership was a distant thought at that point, but they knew they'd be in eventually. Now's the time!
* Bulgarian support for the EU is pretty low and people didn't think it made their life much better
* Bulgarian support for Russia is very high, like 50%, probably due to their historic help in kicking out the Turks
Child mortality is closer to Africa than Europe.
Again, about children, US has the second poorest children among the 35 most developed countries in the world.
More than half Americans have their literacy prophiciency below elementary level.
There's almost a million homeless people in US, that's more than in several rich countries like Japan, Italy, Poland, Germany, etc, combined. Hell I've never seen bidonvilles and tents all around cities in Europe or most of Asia like I've seen in LA or SF.
Inequality in US is at south America level.
US has more incarcerated population than all developed countries combined.
Edit: Also third-world country mean something else completely since Turkey is first-world by original definition.
Also, social mobility is preferable to inequality. Inequality is terrible on many levels.
Everyone is poor – low inequality (1)
Everyone is middle class – low inequality (2)
Many poor, few rich – high inequality (3)
Theoretical cases, not observed in the real world:
Few poor, many rich – high inequality (4)
Everyone is rich – low inequality (5)
The metric of "inequality" only scores well with either poverty (1) or average outcomes (2) in the real world. Is that socialism or communism? I forget.
1. Many people have unrealistic expectations. In reality, no one is coming to save you, and 99% of the time, you need to save yourself.
2. The Russian propaganda story was taught in schools from 1945 to 1990 and beyond. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, it was still taught by inertia. I would bet it's still taught today, 2025 (!), in some shape or form. Yes, Russian actions in the late 1800s had the side-effect of liberating Bulgaria, but by all historical accounts, that was bound to happen since the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.
The most significant action taken by Russia (the Soviet Union) was the occupation of Bulgaria following World War II. The resulting communist regime initially jailed or killed any person who dared speak against it. This is not commonly taught or talked about in the country, even today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Court_(Bulgaria)
Credentials: I am Bulgarian.
That's whole modus operandi of russians entire 20th and 21st century. Really, a cancerous mole that wants to spread at all costs across the face of whole Europe, and the only thing it understands is the rule of stronger dog fucking the rest without a care.
I've grown up in communism too albeit a bit more north, a whole nation enslaved for more than 4 decades by russians. The scars this oppression had left on the soul of my nation are still very visible these days and not going away anytime soon. That depraved nation never even acknowledges atrocities it was doing and still keeps doing on a daily basis.
The saddest part they were very actively shooting/electrocuting people that were just trying to escape to the west, just to show to the rest of population its not worth dreaming of freedom in any way. A milder North korea. I guess dictator's playbooks are very similar everywhere.
Also, under under the Communist rule supported by USSR, they indoctrinated people into a version of history that Turks are the absolute evil, and Russians are the absolute angels saving them from the ottomans.
I.e. in pre-EU era it was called Ottoman slavery, later they start calling it Ottoman era as it was more accurate as Ottoman’s system was based on collecting taxes and resources from the conquered places when giving them plenty of autonomy. Obviously not ideal but far from slavery.
Devshirme, Janissary corps, Batak massacre? There is huge blood debt that is owed to the Balkans and Armenia by the Ottoman Empire and their successor states.
BTW Just like the way Bulgarians may not recognize that the Bulgarian Empire had a military and killed people in order to take others stuff and force them into things they wouldn't do unless defeated through slathering each other, Turks also tend not to understand that institutions like Devshirme or Janissary weren't liked by the people subjected to those.
For example In their mind Devshirme was an education program that gave the opportunity to minority children to have great careers and indeed that was the result(they don't think about how those kids were taken into the program).
Similarly Janissary were elite units with lots of sway in the administration, in their minds Janissaries were spoiled soldiers that are hard to satisfy.
Also, all the wives of the sultans were women from minorities. In the Turkish mind they were lucky women with a lot of influence on the empire. An entire genre of soap operas are made around this and they are very popular in the countries that used to be under the Ottoman rule. Including Bulgaria.
Let's hope that we never go back to these days. Imperialism is evil and I'm sorry that Erdogan and other autocrats are trying to revive those days. I also agree that it was very offensive for the christians to turn Hagia Sofia into a mosque again(was a museum till recently) and I would love to see it becoming a church again.
Also, let's stop renaming stuff. If you like Istanbul you can move to Istanbul, if you want to own istanbul you can purchase a property in Istanbul.
This is not what it's about. It's not about the Turks being evil and Bulgarians et al being angels. It's about the fact that Turks refuse to accept responsibility.
Let me give you an example. I'm Romanian. There are many uneducated folks you'll meet in Romania who deny we killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in WW2. But no serious politician, historian, public figure, or educated person denies that.
The same is not true in Turkey. Pretty much everyone denies the Armenian Genocide.
All of us have shameful periods in our history, but some of us at least have the decency to not deny it.
But, of course, how could you see the genocide as evil when you can't even come to grips with the older Devshirme, a practice where boys were abducted, mutilated (circumcision), forced converted to Islam, executed if they were found praying to Jesus, and trained to fight and kill their own countrymen.
On the other hand Bulgarians and Turks teamed in wars after the forming of the new Bulgarian state.
I don't think many say that at all outside of Turkey/Azerbaijan/Pakistan.
I recall reading the communications of some Ottoman officials trying to cash out the life insurance policies of the Armenians. Pure evil, honestly.
They didn't start with the idea of "let's kill everyone", it built up from the 1930s process to deport "undesirables", when it became too much work they decided to kill everyone instead.
Genocide is genocide, doesn't matter the seed that started it.
The difference is that the the ottomans didn’t have an anti-armenian culture going on and the Ottoman rule wasn’t being legitimized over stuff like “fighting a war against sleazy Armenians who infiltrated us”. It was quite the opposite, with rise of the nationalism in Europe minorities in the empire were the “anti”.
Ottomans didn’t do that because they believed in the inherent evil of the Armenians but because they were responding to those nationalistic movements. The distrust towards Armenians developed with the rebellions that were supported by Russia etc. Armenians weren’t targeted for their Armenianness. In other words none of this would have happened if there were no rebellions. It was done to address a specific problem, can you say the same for the holocaust? Was Hitler trying to address actual troubles that the Jewish minority caused?
Do you know who were/are targeted? The Alawites, it about the people would say things similar things like an anti-semite would say for the Jews. It’s also how you get instantly cancelled in Turkey.
Or a too well managed suppression.
“ We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”
The Armenian genocide is very much a resolved issue. No serious historian denies the genocide any more than he denies the holocaust.
For anyone who is new to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...
[1]https://jacobin.com/2025/07/yanis-varoufakis-on-the-legacy-o...
Portugal managed to get out of the storm, and debt is now below GDP.
Greece took many bad steps trying to recover. And its debt shows that. Their governments have had a big part of the blame. Hell, at one point they didnt have enough money for citizens to withdraw from banks.
And that was before Troika.
Sure but so do the creditors. If you keep giving mortgages to anyone with a drivers license that's on you buddy.
At almost no point is there enough money for citizens to withdraw their money. Modern banks don't keep their assets as cash.
Isn't this the USA system?
This went swimmingly for everyone involved, with Greece now in more debt than ever (debt went from 145.45% of GDP to 209.40% of GDP). And fascist parties going from virtually non-existent to mainstays.
Adding low-efficiency countries like those in southeastern Europe is great for the EU's major exporter - Germany, because it adds more customers who have Euros, and because it devalues the Euro, which means more exports. Better yet, because of Euro the new joiners can't devalue their currency and get their exports high enough to restart the economy, with only viable option being more in debt and/or leaving for Germany, while obliterating the local industries. Win-win-win. For the EU exporters.
So, yes, let's celebrate Bulgaria joining Hotel EU, where food is great, your bill grows exponentially, but you can't ever leave. By the end you'll just end up as a pool boy.
That Greece accepted the terms reflected the reality that the alternative was much worse and would have caused great suffering for Greeks.
Varoufakis would argue the severe terms imposed by the creditors/negotiators exacerbated the fiscal issue. Yes Greece had issues but the creditors's terms exacerbated the problem, made things worse.
It's kind of like borrowing from a loan shark to pay off debts --on average, you're better off not. But hey, once you take it, you either pay up, or you lose something dear to you.
Every other european media outlet talked about greeks (in very racist way) as lazy nation that doesnt want to work.
Not great look for EU. But i dont know about better alternative.
It seems (from here), support for Russia is somehow magically going down as Russia’s economy is having trouble paying for its “support” abroad.
Cyprus ranks 17th and Greece 32nd
Leading compared to what, Romania and North Macedonia?
> support for Russia is somehow magically going down
I don't think support for Russia was ever notably involved in the whole clusterfuck regarding the Greek economy.
Greece: 31695 (2008), 25756 (2025), 31014 (2030, projected)
Romania: 10435 (2008), 21421 (2025), 28809 (2030, projected)
I don't think that's true ... growth is good, but that's because there's a lot of catching up to do. If I remember correctly (and maybe I don't) then real GDP is still like -20% vs 2007, debt is EU-leading at like 150% of GDP, unemployment remains high, and wages remain low.
At least - that was my experience spending a couple months there 2-3 years ago.
Ask a homeowner the difference between a 2% loan (euro price) and 5% (local currency) and you’ll understand why so many countries have opted for the Euro.
But on the other hand, anything that reduces the domination of the US dollar is welcome.
Isn't this kind of what the US is doing though?
Could you elaborate on what you mean? I've not run a business, but from the people I know who do complain similarly about cross-EU and cross-US-state business.
Like the company based in Texas who got their first employee in New York. Suddenly they needed some sort of presence in New York State, get a separate insurance, and accountants for New York State. (federal, state, and city income tax). They have to really want that employee.
From what I've heard, selling across state lines is fine in either case. Getting employees / expanding into new state is in both cases a big deal. Withdrawing (presence, not sales) from a US state is spoken about similarly to if it's a new country.
For employee relocation, that's definitely true. Even moving from Hawaii to Alaska is less of a life change than Spain to Poland. Or hell, probably even Spain to Portugal.
I'm surprised to hear you say selling would be that hard, though. It'd be interesting to see a comparison. And there's also both B2C and B2B.
I'm getting out of my depth, so this is more vibes than concrete knowledge, but: Selling goods isn't that hard in the EU, but you do have to be set up to collect VAT at a different rate depending on where the customer is from, which is a barrier, whereas I think in the US you can just tell the customer that they've got an obligation to pay sales tax in their state? (I remember Amazon battling about this at one point, but I think the states backed down). Selling services cross-border is a nightmare, there's still not really any standardisation of what licenses etc. you need.
Plus of course even if there were no legal issues there's often a language barrier.
Now we might speculate that Greece couldn't have avoided this, even if it weren't for the Euro, but having lived this from the inside, I think that it wouldn't be that painful.
Countries like Japan, Italy and even USA nowdays, have comparable debt to GDP indexes, but none of them (as far as I undestand) have had this kind of dorp in living standards, price inflation or increase in poverty rates since 2008.
Best of luck to our Bulgarian neighbours. They are going to need it!
Certainly better than Germany (however comparable the two economies can be): https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-surveillance-e...
The real economy, the one that affects people's lives, is still something like 25% below what was pre-2009. In essence people are still 25% poorer than they were before 2009. That's the worst recession EVER recorded in recent history. Worse than the 1930s.
That's why Greece is only slightly above Bulgaria (yet) in real purchasing power compared to other EU countries.
Don't get me wrong. There were a lot of benefits for most of the EU countries, but the lack of common economic strategy, and regulation prooved catastrophic for some.
Greece is not in a recession, it hasn't been in one for a while. It's in austerity mode which I do agree it's a too blunt of a tool to use for recovery but alas those were the terms for Greece to get a bailout after its debt mismanagement (including lying in their official government reports for many years).
> Now we might speculate that Greece couldn't have avoided this, even if it weren't for the Euro, but having lived this from the inside, I think that it wouldn't be that painful.
And why do you think that? It's a small country, with a small economy, accruing so much debt that wasn't used for development which in turn didn't generate taxes in return. Notwithstanding the cultural practice of tax evasion, it was going to implode either way.
It would be probably as painful, or more painful, to be shackled to the IMF's terms (which always have included austerity) while holding your own currency which would be quasi-worthless because no one wants to buy your bonds unless you paid massive interests. Debt repayment premiums would be a massive headache either way in the Greek budget (with or without the euro), devaluing your own currency would create a lot of pain for the people since Greece imports a lot of more advanced stuff from other EU members, and also would erode all savings from a relatively old population.
I don't agree with the austerity bullshit, just to be clear, but I don't think there was any solution that wouldn't be painful, maybe different pains but it was never going to be much better.
I say that as someone who lived through multiple Brazilian crisis, including four currency changes to tackle hyperinflation, lived under IMF-imposed terms.
I understand the pain but in both cases (Brazil, and Greece) the absolute mismanagement of the state's finances for decades required bowing down to the powers that be (IMF, ECB, etc.) to save the country from bankruptcy.
Also the IMF was also part of the Greek debt restructuring deal, so it wasn't that different from what Brazil or other countries have experienced.
I am not against the Euro, far from it. But the EU could have handled this crisis much better for the benefit of both Greece and itself. The Greek economy wouldn't have collapsed, and the anti-Euro sentiment which led to the rise of ultra-right-wing parties in EU wouldn't grow that much.
From what I have seen, salaries will certainly adjust themselves, and they will grow, but the resulting purchasing power is going to remain lower than it has been prior to introducing the euro.
Thought maybe I understood the discussion wrong, because Lithuania does have a minimum wage that is government mandated.
You have to back such claims with data. Also consider what happens in the said adjustment lag and how long it lasts.
If prices doubled so should GDP, right?
When Germany converted to the Euro, the conversion rate was (IIRC) about ~2 DM to the Euro but from what I recall, a lot of everyday things went from costing 7 DM to 7 euro, effectively doubling in price. IIRC France was similar (ie ~6.5 francs to the Euro but 10 Francs went to 3 euro, etc).
I've tried searching for any studies on this to see if the effect was measured and, if so, whether it held with later countries joining the euro.
I'm a little surprised that the euro has been this stable for this long (going on 30 years). Finland debated leaving. IT's debated if there's even a legal mechanism to leave. We still have the problem that the ECB sets eurozone monetary policy with Germany and Greece being vastly different economies.
The currencies were pegged for a period before then so other than niche cases there really weren’t opportunities for massive price increases.
Dunno about Belgium but what I notice in French supermarkets is that prices aren’t rounded at all. 10k SKUs will have 10k different prices (ish).
Plain frozen pizza? 4,62 EUR.
Same with pepperoni? 4,92 EUR
Domestic 500mL beer? 1,14 EUR
Fancier beer? 1,81 EUR
The situation was literally identical in Germany, where the official rate was also precisely 1.95583 to the euro (because the lev used to be tied to the DM at 1:1), but not so in most other European countries.
One small disruptor to a core component of a small economy and they are standing outside the IMF to survive.
There are currently 50-60 small countries that depend on borrowing from the IMF (that too in dollars paying interest in dollars - given competition levels guess what dollar generating capacities small economies have? They end up economic vassals of larger systems or selling off national assets or being used in geopolitical games).
On the other hand look at China and India. They have more provinces/states than the EU and larger populations. Vastly differently economies spanning all those subunits. Yet you wont find any of those subunits complaining about their central bank setting monetary policy.
Why? Cuz look at the surroundings - Sri Lanka/Pakistan/Myanmar/Bangladesh/Thailand/Indonesia/even South Korea all at one point or another requiring the IMF to step in and bail them out when they ran into trouble.
The world is too complex and fast/ever changing and small economies are increasingly dependent on larger economies to manage the unknowns and unpredictability that lie ahead. Its almost become impossible to survive by themselves. Sort of like running a book store in the era of Amazon.
This is ludicrously wrong of India, and I understand enough of human nature and economics that I’d be surprised if it were true of China, though it may be more suppressed.
Monetary policy is government policy. The ruling party is seldom uniformly popular across their entire domain. Perhaps you’re more familiar with US politics: broadly, rural is Republican, urban is Democrat. In India, the ruling party BJP has a lot of the north, but not so much of the south or east. Accordingly, you should expect dissent from regions with a different state government. And as for socioeconomic disparity between states, rich may complain if they seem to be subsidising poor, poor may complain if they don’t seem to be getting enough attention.
> Monetary policy is government policy. The ruling party is seldom uniformly popular across their entire domain.
If by monetary policy you are referring to fiscal policy, you're pretty much spot on. There's always in-fighting between states and lots of complaining about the central/federal government favoring certain states over others.
I mean and also the US, but the key difference here is that those are also cohesive countries where wealth transfers between different areas is the norm. Much less problematic if a policy is better for New York than Alabama if you know for sure that the federal government is going to make sure Alabama doesn't get screwed.
In the EU you have the opposite problem: policies that benefit rich countries will result in the rich countries complaining about how they support the other economies and moralizing.
The country already experienced quite a bit of inflation last years, regardless of not being in the euro. I don’t see why the change of the currency that is already pegged to euro since the creation of Euro will cause any inflation beyond the rounding and the rounding is for 1:1.95583 and that often provides rounding sown incentive as 4.99 becoming 2.04 and 4.49 becoming 2.2957
A more realistic concern can be that Bulgaria might start borrowing irresponsibly. Currently Bulgaria's debt to GDP is just around %22, which is very low.
The inflation did correct itself the years after (aka lower than usual). The perception with many people still is that the euro made everything more expensive, but that's only based on feelings. The inflation numbers tell a different story.
The lev was pegged to the euro in 1999, Bulgaria was roughly 80% poorer than the EU leaders
(I'm using PPP figures from ChatGPT to make these comparisons, I don't know if I'm making any sense)
I mean if you've tried to find evidence and can't, this feels a lot like you're simply misremembering?
I've only checked the data for Italy but real inflation stayed pretty much constant while perceived inflation absolutely blew out of proportion.
So essentially people noticed some minority of shops raising their prices talking advantage of the little confusion around the exchange rate and never shut up about it since
The euro has depreciated more (in both real purchasing power and against other currencies) than the Deutsche Mark.
The DM was seen as one of the strongest and most stable post-WWII currencies, while the euro has struggled with crises and inflation.
Bulgaria pegging to the DM in 1997 meant anchoring to a much harder currency than what the euro has become.
Look, it seems you have beef with Bulgaria adopting the euro based on your other comments, but matter of fact is that many people remember the hyperinflation and the Videnov winter — especially older people that were queuing for bread with all of their lifetime savings disappearing overnight. Hence, the board staying almost 30 years. What’s scary for many is that the board in its current form is just a law that can be removed with simple majority, e.g. the current stable state could be made obsolete in a matter of a weekend — with devastating consequences for the economy. Adopting the euro means tighter integration with EU only and it’s mostly irrevocable … sadly for Russia and its proxies over here.
For the Lev to be independent we have to exit the currency board but this is madness, since our exports are already adjusted to EU countries where the currency is EUR anyway.
It's still hilarious to me how upset people are at this (or at least pretend to be).
I haven't bought anything in plastic bottle for years. Most drinks are either glass or cans.
But just because you don't drink soft drinks or bottled mineral water much, doesn't mean others don't either.
It's similar to free plastic bags or deposit system for bottles. Inconvenience is so tiny that no person genuinely complain about that (not for social karma/attention), but economically when there were millions of bags and half a million bottles sold every day...
To put it into HN-themed metaphor, reducing error log verbosity matters too, when you have millions of lines.
Are you 80 or something? It takes two tries to adjust and understand that it is much superior to unattached cap.
The whole thing is a big meme to make fun of EU, because there’s barely anything else to complain about.
I don't get why people don't like it.
I even find myself vaguely annoyed now whenever I drink from glass bottles, that those caps are loose.
> People are upset because it shows Brussels disfunction
Reminds me to that meme where the debated point is what OS is better, and the conclusion is that normal people don't talk about operating systems. The only people I ever hear mention Brussels unprompted are rightwing grifters.
The new lids are harder for kids to use, bother you when drinking, get in the way when pouring and are a general nuisance.
How? Just rotate it by 90 degrees. It's really not that hard, and in return you will never lose a cap again and we reduce litter by quite a bit. It's a pretty good trade-off imo.
It bothers because it pulls back towards the bottle and presses on your mouth. Or if you use force to open it at 180, then it doesn’t screw back on properly because the plastic is bent and holds it in a wrong position. So again force is needed for something which used to be ridiculously easy.
As I said, kids don’t manage that well. For adults, it’s one more little irritant.
To paraphrase this differently: if I as an investor gave you 100M EUR and 24 months, would you be happy to spend it for changing a frigging cap on the bottle or would you rather invest that money and time+people resources on something else?
Not what I said.
> in the context of the global situation, not really efficient at all in making the quality of life of EU citizens any better?
Why would all decisions have to be this massively efficient slamdunk of an idea? Things can even be downright specifically bad yet still be generally useful in the grand scheme of things. Things can also be just kind of a stinker sometimes. You don't normally skewer something large over a minor issue. Critique is fine, but then "I don't like it" doesn't hold much weight, certainly not more than "well I do".
> would you rather invest that money and time+people resources on something else?
Are the levers I can and am expected to pull on the same as the EU? I don't think so.
It's exactly what you were questioning and which is why I gave you the concrete example why people get attached to this particular non-problem.
As for the rest of your comment, I think it went a little bit over your head.
My remark about most people who bring up Brussels unprompted being rightwing grifters really was just that, and nothing else.
It is not lost on me that like anything, they can and should be critiqued as well.
It's just not really being done, and when it is done, it's usually coming from a place of ulterior motives and ill faith (for now), and so is fairly uncommon. So it's a strange thing to claim that that's what "people think of". No it isn't, not unless you're in the aforementioned circles, which is not the general populace at all.
> To paraphrase this differently: if I as an investor gave you 100M EUR and 24 months, would you be happy to spend it for changing a frigging cap on the bottle or would you rather invest that money and time+people resources on something else?
Grifter 101 – “think about what we’d be able to achieve if you did X instead of Y, comrade!”.
Let me clarify here, cause the editing window for my comment upstream from this has already passed:
> People are upset because it shows Brussels disfunction in a nutshell.
This is what I was reacting to when I said that in my experience people who bring up Brussels like this "are rightwing grifters".
It wasn't in the sense that I was pointing at the person above or anyone else in particular here with this label, but rather, that I was taking an issue with the claim that this kind of thinking (Brussels this, Brussels that) is a people at large thing ("people are upset because"), rather than just something prevalent in those aforementioned circles.
This does sort of imply that I think the person above my comments belongs to those circles, but that really doesn't need to be true, nor was that really my intention to suggest necessarily. I guess this is as good of a lesson for me as any why engaging in labeling (particularly negative one) can be detrimental to discourse, regardless of context. Apologies.
Eurozone doesn't know how to manage the economy successfully. The euro has been a failure. We went from somewhat parity with the US in 2006 to lagging quite behind them 20 years later.
Also, a strong currency does not equate to a strong or well-managed economy. (Unless you're Donald Trump.)
This benefits the bigger economies, at the expense of the smaller economies. Any fiscal policy is dictated by the bigger countries, and with identical currencies, the only policy left for Bulgarians is to cut wages in public sector. This will impact local economy, and ripple through their society becoming poorer. And the bigger foreign corporations can ransack the place. Brilliant.
Over the years I've seen a lot of missinformation on this topic that follows pretty much this exact train of thought. Why would countries join the EU and the Euro if it didn't benefit them?
The baltics have all grown massively since the 90s when they became independent, and even though they all were on nice trajectories they still all decided to join the EU and the Euro.
Bringing up the UK as some model for all other "small" european countrie sounds odd. The UK joined the EEC specifically because it had slower economic growth than the other large EU countries.
The UK, and specifically the city of london, with its huge international financial pull has a very different place in the global economy than Bulgaria...
Joining benefits the country's elites, rather than its general populace -- and it's these elites who decide whether to join.
Bulgaria joining will weaken the Euro, which benefits big, export-oriented economies such as Germany and France. This is how the Euro has always worked: the big economies dilute their trade surpluses at the cost of smaller European countries.
That's bullshit. The decision to join is made via referendum.
In fact, without the Euro/EMU, Ireland's currency would likely still be tied to Sterling, as it was until 1980. This would be, ah, _not great_, especially at the moment. Clearly, at least in this case, the euro benefited a small country (in particular Ireland was spared the various fiscal shocks that the UK suffered as a result of Brexit and Truss).