I don't know if it's their intention but as soon as the article mentions that the protest leader is pro-Russian, I immediately assume anything he stands for is wrong and therefore euro adoption must be good. Of course someone pro-Russian is trying to push countries away from integrating with the West, and I have to assume any arguments he's making are probably disingenuous and misleading.
There were even Russians at some of the anti Euro protests. Probably proped up by the Kremlin through Tiktok and Telegram.
Bulgaria has a pegged currency to the Euro since forever, they got quite depopulated after 1991 and their only chance is to become a tourist destination and to attract some investments from Türkye and maybe Greece, because nobody else would invest. The fact that Romania isn't interested in builing more bridges over the Danube and that Serbia isn't part of the EU also puts the northern part of Bulgaria in a tight spot. If you want to see what a depopulated country looks like, travel through northern Bulgaria. It looks like the descriptions from the book The World Without Us.
It is clearly not in the benefit of Bulgaria to join a shared currency with advanced, manufacturing, positive export surplus countries like Germany.
Losing control of the currency will result in all domestic manufacturing to become more expensive (therefore incapable to compete with higher quality German goods), and all manufacturing capabilities will disappear in favour of the most cancerous form of industry, tourism. Like what happened to Greece and Portugal.
I'm not so familiar with Greece's and Portugal's issues when switching to the euro, but I have followed along the news with Croatia's switch to the euro. Where it was a prime excuse for the large chains (mainly supermarket chains) to round up prices during the conversion.
They are not losing any control because they never had any. The Bulgarian currency was tied to the DM and later to the Euro. The only thing that changes now is that instead of 2 Leva = 1 Euro, everything will just be Euro.
It’s also funny to see how anti everything related to EU/Europe most of the tech people are. You can see this here, like most of the comments that now proclaim the death of Bulgaria or Germany bailing them out, from people that have no clue on the background and history of this move.
Bulgaria has already pegged its currency (the lev) to the euro through a currency board since 1997. This means it already lacks independent monetary policy, and joining the euro wouldn’t significantly change that. The exchange rate is fixed, and inflation differentials are already impacting competitiveness.
Moreover, Bulgaria does not directly compete with Germany in the same product categories. Bulgaria is integrated into supply chains, often providing components or assembly work for German companies.
You are only 7M. I’ve got the feeling that it is just not large enough to significantly be distorted by eurozone monetary policy, at least in the way that might affect much larger economies.
> Bulgaria is unusual in that it pegged its currency, the lev, to the euro right from the beginning of monetary union in 1999, even before it joined the European Union in 2007.
Apparently, they did not use that control in the last 26 years.
Croatia had kuna pegged to Euro, replaced it with euro in 2023 and prices of almost everything went up. Why Bulgaria's government is working against it's people?
Slovakia did it in a smart way. All kinds of laws that mandated showing prices in both currencies for a very long transitionary period, disallowing increasing the price when euro kicks in or with weeks of transitionary period end. It can be done with a functional parliament
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 48.2 ms ] threadhttps://apnews.com/article/bulgaria-euro-protest-nationalist...
Bulgaria has a pegged currency to the Euro since forever, they got quite depopulated after 1991 and their only chance is to become a tourist destination and to attract some investments from Türkye and maybe Greece, because nobody else would invest. The fact that Romania isn't interested in builing more bridges over the Danube and that Serbia isn't part of the EU also puts the northern part of Bulgaria in a tight spot. If you want to see what a depopulated country looks like, travel through northern Bulgaria. It looks like the descriptions from the book The World Without Us.
Losing control of the currency will result in all domestic manufacturing to become more expensive (therefore incapable to compete with higher quality German goods), and all manufacturing capabilities will disappear in favour of the most cancerous form of industry, tourism. Like what happened to Greece and Portugal.
It’s also funny to see how anti everything related to EU/Europe most of the tech people are. You can see this here, like most of the comments that now proclaim the death of Bulgaria or Germany bailing them out, from people that have no clue on the background and history of this move.
Moreover, Bulgaria does not directly compete with Germany in the same product categories. Bulgaria is integrated into supply chains, often providing components or assembly work for German companies.
You are only 7M. I’ve got the feeling that it is just not large enough to significantly be distorted by eurozone monetary policy, at least in the way that might affect much larger economies.
Apparently, they did not use that control in the last 26 years.