Brussels, Belgium, July 8 (AFP/APP/DNA):EU ministers are set to give the final green light on Tuesday for Bulgaria to adopt the euro on January 1, 2026, when the country would become the single currency area’s 21st member.
The European Commission last month said the EU’s poorest country had fulfilled the strict conditions to adopt the euro, while the European Central Bank (ECB) also gave a positive opinion.
Bulgaria’s switch from the lev to the euro next year will come 19 years after the country of 6.4 million people joined the European Union.
“Today is truly an important day for Bulgaria. We are on the verge of achieving a strategic goal for our country,” Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova said before her EU counterparts met in Brussels.
Bulgaria’s journey to joining the eurozone has had a stormy political backdrop with seven elections in three years — the last in October 2024.
Its bid will be formally approved by EU finance ministers once they adopt the legal texts necessary for the historic move.
“(This) is obviously a historical day for Bulgaria, so congratulations,” EU economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters in Brussels.
“It’s also a good day, I would say, for Eurogroup and eurozone as a whole, as that strengthens and enlarges the eurozone,” he added.
But recent polls show Bulgarian society remains divided on the euro, with experts attributing the scepticism largely to fears of rising prices and declining purchasing power.
President Rumen Radev shocked many when he proposed holding a referendum on the matter but that was given short shrift by the Bulgarian parliament.
Since June, protesters have gathered in Sofia to call for “keeping the Bulgarian lev”. A symbolic protest camp with several tents has been set up near the presidency and the Bulgarian National Bank in the capital.
Far-right opposition parties have used the issue to promote anti-EU narratives.
Proponents in Bulgaria, however, insist the move will help improve the country’s economy, and reinforce its ties to the West and protect against Russia’s influence.
“The political benefits are becoming increasingly significant, as the protests against the euro seem to bear the mark of the Kremlin,” 43-year-old musician Veselin Dimitrov told AFP in Sofia.
