engleski

Is There a Need for Applying a Broader Set of Criteria for EMU Membership – the Role of Unofficial Euroisation

The project of a single European currency has been the subject of much controversy since its very beginnings. This enormous experiment has to date remained a hot issue in both academic and policy circles, especially nowadays when questions of the euro future are considered very seriously. Given this it seems a bit surprising to see a number of the EU member states still dedicated to adopting the euro in near future. The countries wishing to enter the EMU have to fulfil the Maastricht criteria. Notwithstanding the recent worries and assuming that the euro will survive, this paper critically assesses the appropriateness of the Maastricht criteria and proposes that in the case of countries from Central and Eastern Europe an additional weight be given to unofficial euroisation which may have important consequences for the conduct of monetary and exchange rate policy. Therefore there is a need to explore its implications for the official introduction of the euro. This topic has been generally neglected in the literature and this paper fills this gap by investigating the need that the convergence criteria be modified in case of the euroised economies. These considerations are empirically explored using the case of Croatia.

Unofficial euroisation; Maastricht criteria; monetary integration

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