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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Defiant Bulgaria to push for ERM-2 membership

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SOFIA: Bulgaria stepped up its campaign to adopt the euro on Thursday, challenging member states to let it into the single currency’s “waiting room” in the coming months — or spell out why it cannot join.


Speaking to Brussels-based reporters as EU commissioners visited Sofia at the start of Bulgaria’s six-month presidency of EU ministerial councils, the finance minister said he was ready to apply to join the ERM-2 exchange rate mechanism this year even if he had no assurance that the request would be accepted.


Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and finance chief Vladislav Goranov said the European Union’s poorest nation had long met all formal criteria for joining the euro zone and was frustrated that fellow EU states were reluctant to let it in.


“We have done our homework for the euro zone,” Borissov said, noting the lev’s 20-year-old fixed rate against the euro, a non-existent budget deficit and one of the lowest public debt levels in the EU. “Any moment they invite us, we can enter it.”


Bulgaria has been reluctant to repeat the experience of flat rejection of its request to join the Schengen passport-free area and has been in discussions on joining the ERM-2 with the European Commission and the European Central Bank, hoping for an informal green light before lodging its formal application.


However, Goranov said, patience was wearing thin with a lack of clarity from states on why they object. Euro zone officials say that lead economy Germany sees the gulf between Bulgarian incomes with the EU average and concerns over graft and organised crime as reasons to keep it at arm’s length.


Goranov said he now expected to lodge an application by the middle of this year after a biennial EU report on performance on economic convergence, which the EU executive said it plans to publish in May.


“We are ready to file a formal application even if we are not convinced that the reply will be ‘yes’,” Goranov said. “This is not a threat,” he said, noting pressure on the government from Bulgarian businesses to join. “A ‘no’ will also show us what to do in order to get there.” — Reuters


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