Sokk előtt, sokk után? – a balti országok és az euró
The Baltic Countries and the Euro: Before a Shock, after a Shock?

Summary/Abstract: The adoption of the euro seems an increasingly remote option for the three Baltic countries, although after their accession to the European Union most analysts estimated they would be among the first to introduce the common currency. Estonia and Lithuania joined the ERM II exchange rate mechanism, regarded as the anteroom of the euro, on 27 June 2004, and Latvia joined on 29 April 2005; at the time, all three countries were considered to have a good chance of entering the euro zone within two or three years, simultaneously with Slovenia (or not much later). The countries of the Baltic joined the exchange rate mechanism in the framework of the so-called currency board system, with a unilateral commitment. For example, Latvia concluded an agreement with the European Central Bank (ECB), containing the commitment to allow a fluctuation band of only ±1% for its national currency, the lats, as opposed to the fluctuation band of ±15% usually applied in ERM II. The main reason for insisting on the fixed exchange rate – an approach adopted by all three Baltic countries – was that at the beginning of the 1990s the countries’ governments suffered an economic downturn reaching almost 50% of gross domestic product (GDP), after which they announced economic programmes that focused precisely on exchange rate stability as their determining element.

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