Bulgaria aims to join the euro zone in more than three years. The country has set itself a target date of 1 January 2015 [1]. The euro coins have not been designed yet, but the motif for all coins has been chosen to be the Madara Rider.
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The Madara Rider was one of the favourites to become the symbol of Bulgaria to be used on the national side of the country's euro coins. Other eminent pretenders for the title ‘Symbol of Bulgaria' were the ancient tradition of the nestinars (Bulgarian fire-dancers), Cyrillic,[2] the Rila Monastery[3] and the Tsarevets medieval fortress near Veliko Turnovo.[3]
As of 17 June 2008, debates about the design of the future Bulgarian Euro coins were held all over the country. They continued until 29 June when a vote decided the symbol to be used on all coins. Bulgarians voted in post offices, gas stations and schools.[4][5]
Finally, on 29 June 2008 it was announced that 25.44% of the Bulgarian voters had chosen the Madara Horseman to be depicted on future euro coins.[6][7][8][9]
Bulgaria euro coins will replace the current national currency, the lev, once the convergence criteria are fulfilled. As the current lev was fixed to the Deutsche Mark at par, the lev's peg effectively switched to the euro, at the rate of 1.95583 leva = 1 euro, which is the Deutsche Mark's fixed exchange rate to euro.[10] On the occasion of the signing of the EU accession treaty on 25 April 2005, the Bulgarian National Bank issued a commemorative coin with a face value of 1.95583 leva, giving it a nominal value of exactly 1 euro. [11][12]
Bulgaria meets three and fails on two criteria in order to join the eurozone. It derogates on the price stability criterion, which envisages that its inflation does not exceed that of the three EU member states with the lowest inflation (Malta, the Netherlands and Denmark) by 1.5%. Bulgaria’s inflation in the 12 months to March 2008 reached 9.4%, well above the reference value of 3.2%, the report said. Furthermore, Bulgaria has not yet joined ERM II but plans to formally apply for membership in November 2009. [1][2][3]
On the upside, Bulgaria fulfills the state budget criterion, which foresees that the deficit does not exceed 3% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Over the past few years, the report said, the country has consistently improved its budget fundamentals and since 2003, a break-even point, the budget ran surpluses and in 2007 was at 3.4% of GDP. The EC forecasts that it will remain at 3.2% of GDP in both 2008 and 2009.
In regard to public debt, Bulgaria has also been within the prescribed cap of 60% of GDP. Government debt has also been declining consistently, from 50% of GDP to 18% in 2007. The expectation are to reach 11% of GDP in 2009.[13] Some recent analysis says that Bulgaria will not be able to join the Eurozone earlier than 2015, due to their inflation problems and the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008.[14] Some members of Bulgarian government, notably economy minister Petar Dimitrov, have speculated recently about unilaterally introducing the euro, which was not well-met by the European Commission[15]
On January 11, 2010, the Bulgarian Prime-Minister Boyko Borisov said that Bulgaria will apply for ERM II membership in the end of the month.,[16] however the application was delayed until at least 2011.[17]
The Maastricht Treaty originally required that all members of the European Union join the euro once certain economic criteria are met. Bulgaria meets 2 out of the 5 criteria.
| Convergence criteria | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inflation rate 1 | Government finances | ERM II membership | Long-term interest rate 2 | ||
| annual government deficit to GDP | gross government debt to GDP | ||||
| Reference value | max 1.0% | max 3% | max 60% | min 2 years | max 6.0% |
| Bulgaria (May 2010)[18] | 1.7% | 2.8% | 17.4% | not yet a member | 6.9% |
|
criteria fulfilled
criteria not fulfilled
1 No more than 1.5% higher than the 3 best-performing EU member states. HICP rate as published by the ECB. |
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Bulgarian uses Cyrillic. The current design of euro banknotes has the word euro written in both the Latin and Greek alphabets. The same is true of euro coins, but if the Greek model is followed, the alternative spelling will go on the national (obverse) side. In popular Bulgarian usage the currency is referred to as евро [ˈɛvro] (from Bulgarian Европа [ɛvˈropa], meaning Europe); the plural varies in spoken language – евро, евра [ɛvˈra], еврота [ˈɛvrota] – but the most widespread form is евро – without inflection in plural. The word for euro, though, has a normal form with the postpositive definite article – еврото (the euro).
The word for eurocent is евроцент [ˈɛvrotsɛnt] and most probably that, or only цент [ˈtsɛnt], will be used in future when the European currency is accepted in Bulgaria. In contrast to euro, the word for “cent” has a full inflection both in the definite and the plural form: евроцент (basic form), евроцентът (full definite article – postpositive), евроцентове (plural), 2 евроцента (numerative form – after numerals). The word stotinki (стотинки), singular stotinka (стотинка), the name of the subunit of the current Bulgarian currency can be used in place of cent, as it has become a synomym of the word “coins” in colloquial Bulgarian; just like “cent” (from Latin centum), its etymology is from a word meaning hundred – “sto” (сто). Stotinki is used widely in the Bulgarian diaspora in Europe to refer to subunits of currencies other than the Bulgarian lev.
Initially, the ECB and the EU Commission insisted that Bulgaria change the name it uses for the currency from ЕВРО to ЕУРО, claiming the currency should have an official and standard spelling across the EU. Bulgaria on the other hand stated that it wants to take into account the different alphabet and the principle of phonetic orthography in the Bulgarian language.[19]
The issue was decisively resolved in favour of Bulgaria at the 2007 EU Summit in Lisbon, allowing Bulgaria to use the Cyrillic spelling евро on all official EU documents.[20][21]
As of 13 December 2007, all EU institutions – including the ECB – use ЕВРО as the official Bulgarian transliteration of the single European currency.
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