Guinea says it’s opting out of the ECOWAS single currency. The 12 member West African economic bloc is set to launch the monetary union and eco currency in July 2027. Guinea is the first member state to say it’s retaining its national currency.
I wonder will there be many more opt-outs. Having seen how much the EU has benefitted Europe and allowed us to defend our regional interests through (admittedly imperfect) solidarity, I’d certainly like to see ECOWAS sow and reap the same rewards, and maybe my analysis is overly simplistic, but I’d guess that a single currency is a significant part of that recipe.
Several EU countries aren’t using the euro and it seems to be going pretty well.
Right now, Denmark is the only one that has opted out, since the UK left.
The others that don’t use it haven’t met the conditions to join but are working towards it.
Once those five do, it’ll be 26 out of 27 using the euro.
The others that don’t use it haven’t met the conditions to join but are working towards it.
Lolwut no they’re not. Not all of them, anyway. Romania might be, but Sweden and Poland certainly aren’t working towards it, and there have been leadership changes in Hungary but they weren’t working towards it under Orbán. Czechia’s a bit of a question mark.
Sweden is indeed de-facto opting out by not meeting the stability threshold on purpose, but the others simply don’t qualify.
Waiting to fall into the criteria naturally is how it’s intended, not wanting to artificially accelerate it is the correct move in my (and apparently their) opinion, I don’t see anything about them still planning to avoid it when they meet the economic targets.Right now they seem to simply say “don’t do what greece did”.
Sweden’s not the only one intentionally failing to meet convergence criteria.
Anyway, the eco can certainly still succeed even if there are more opt-outs; I just hope there aren’t too many more.
I can understand that, as an outsider looking in- Eurozone has been great for Germany and France but an unmitigated distater for everyone else (seemingly by design, so German and French billionaires could buy up all the businesses in the eastern bloc)
I’m Irish and we’re delighted with the Euro.
