Slovakia pledges to stick to 2009 euro entry goal
By Lisbeth Kirk
Slovakia's finance minister pledged on Monday (7 August) to resign unless his country met its goal to join the euro by 2009.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Jan Pociatek said, "It is my personal responsibility to follow the euro commitment," allaying fears that a new leftist government, elected in June, might delay the adoption of the single currency.
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Mr Pociatek said that his main priority was to keep the Slovakian budget deficit under the Maastricht limit of 3% of GDP. "All extra spending has to be met from extra economic growth and cuts in government spending," he told the paper.
Slovakia hopes to be the first of the so-called Visegrad four - which also includes Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - to join the single currency.
Hungary is expected to postpone its plans to enter until 2010 and Poland is the only one of the ten new member states yet to set a date for joining the euro.
The Czech Republic has not taken a decision on the euro but a recent analysis carried out in the country suggests it would be possible to join in 2010.
Slovenia will be the first of these new EU states to enter the eurozone in January next year.
Slovenia's Central Bank governor Mitja Gaspari will join the ECB Governing Council in January, but the Slovenian finance minister Andrej Bajuk will sit on the eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers from September.
Beyond that, Malta, Cyprus and Estonia are targeting January 2008. Latvia initially said it wanted to join the eurozone on January 1 2008, but this date is now under review and most believe a target date of 2009 is more likely.
The last remaining country - Lithuania - saw its bid to join the euro rejected by the ECB and the European Commission earlier this year, after the country barely missed the eurozone's inflation criterion.
Whilst there is no new official target date, the prime minister in Vilnius, Gediminas Kirkilas, said in a recent interview that his country is now unlikely to adopt the euro before 2009.
All EU member states, with the exception of the UK and Denmark, are legally obliged to adopt the euro.
Sweden, although it is bound by the European Treaties to join the eurozone, looks unlikely to do so in the near future, after the people voted overwhelmingly against EMU membership in a September 2003 referendum.
Euro membership also looks a distant prospect in the UK and Denmark, as the issue has been kicked into the political long grass in both countries. Denmark's Central Bank Governor Nils Bernstein said recently that he expected his country to be sitting in the euro waiting room "for a very long time."