There is a witty piece in Tony Barber’s FT blog this morning about the use of the euro. He points out that, despite official frowning on unilateral adoption of the euro, Montenegro and Kosovo unilaterally adopted it on 1 January 2002, thus providing some protection from the financial crisis. But the chief economist at Montenegro’s central bank does not recommend unilateral adoption of the euro by the Baltic states, no matter how much they might suffer. So, as Barber summarises: ‘a country that is outside the EU and outside the eurozone but uses the euro, is telling countries that are inside the EU but outside the eurozone not to use the euro, while the EU and eurozone let countries that are outside themselves use the euro but won’t extend the privilege to countries inside the EU but outside the eurozone.’ Got that?
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