Prínosy a náklady vstupu Slovenskej republiky do Európskej hospodárskej a menovej únie
MERITS AND COSTS FROM THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC ENTRY TO EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the prospects of the Slovak Republic (SR) entry to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and assumes possible benefits as well as potential risks associated with this step. From the national-economy point of view one of the benefits of the monetary integration is a better resistance against likely speculative foreign exchange attacks. This is especially important for small open national economies and therefore also for Slovakia. The example of several West-European countries indicated that the prospects of the euro-zone membership leads to a better budgetary discipline and can be to a large extend contributional so that necessary, but politically not very popular structural reforms will materialize. On the other side, the entry to the monetary union is associated with several risks, which come from the lost chance to pursue own independent monetary policy. The above said risks are acceptable under the prerequisite that the respective countries form an optimal monetary region. If so, the single central bank (in case of EMU this function was undertaken by the European Central Bank ECB) makes a single monetary policy which meets national-economic needs of all membership countries. In this terms the article focused on three selected criteria – foreign-trade linking, likeliness of asymmet-ric shocks and mobility of production factors – and offers answers to the questions whether the Slovak Republic will form in a short period of time an optimal monetary region with the current and future members of the euro-zone. Regarding the first crite-rion, the most important portion of foreign trade volumes Slovakia has already makes with the EU member countries or with Central European neighbours (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), which like Slovakia, belong to candidates for the membership in the European Union. Regarding the deepening process of European integration we can assume that the level of foreign trade tie between the above mentioned countries will be much deeper. This intensity of foreign trade connections between the SR and countries, which are members of the EMU or which are likely to become its members in a close future, decrease the probabi-lity that Slovakia, after its entry to euro-zone, will be ex-posed to asymmetric shocks. The higher risks regarding the Economic and Monetary Union as a possible optimal monetary region for the SR are related to the mobility of production factor within the euro-zone extended by the Central and Eastern Europe countries. Language barriers, but predominantly the planned several-year transition periods preventing the free mobility of labour and of capital indicates a potential obsta-cle on the road that should lead to a successful integration of the SR and of other can-didate countries to the EMU.

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