Bulgaria government coalition keeps January 2024 euro accession target
Bulgaria’s January 2024 provisional target date for joining the euro zone remains unchanged after the four parliamentary groups that make up the country’s ruling coalition met to discuss the issue late on May 9.
The meeting was called by Finance Minister Assen Vassilev, co-leader of the senior government coalition partner We Continue the Change, after the issue caused tension between coalition partners.
Last week, the head of Parliament’s budget committee Lyubomir Karimanski criticised the Cabinet’s intention to approve the euro zone accession plan without first submitting it for discussion in Parliament.
Karimanski, who is an MP for junior coalition partner ITN, appeared to cast doubt on the target date, saying that the Finance Ministry was yet to present an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of introducing the common currency, as had been agreed during coalition-building talks last year.
At the meeting on May 9, the coalition partners agreed that the “strategic” part of the euro zone accession plan would be submitted to Parliament, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) reported.
“I think we all understood how important it is for strategic priorities to be discussed in the right place, meaning the budget committee and the parliamentary floor even,” BNR quoted Karimanski as saying after the coalition council meeting.
Karimanski said that the euro zone accession target date would remain unchanged until the Finance Ministry’s cost-benefit analysis was concluded, BNR reported.
(Photo: Steve Ford/sxc.hu)
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