site.btaBulgaria Meets Last Criterion for Price Stability for Euro Area: Reactions

At the beginning of Monday’s government meeting on Monday, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said that based on Eurostat inflation data, published on Monday, the reference value for the price stability criterion, is calculated at 2.6%, which January inflation in Bulgaria matches. This is the last important of the three convergence criteria, Zhelyazkov added.

Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova said that this effectively gives the cabinet grounds to ask the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) to prepare ad hoc convergence reports on Bulgaria.

An ad hoc convergence report on Bulgaria's readiness to join the euro area will be requested as soon as the work on the budget is completed, Denitsa Sacheva, deputy chair of the GERB-UDF parliamentary group, told journalists.

“Today is a great day for Bulgaria. We fully meet the criteria for eurozone membership,” said the chairman of the parliamentary budget and finance committee and MP Delyan Dobrev of GERB-UDF. “He explained that the rule is that the percentage is rounded in favour of the candidate country. That is why I say that we have no hesitation that we meet the criterion. We are again among the best performers in the EU, with the lowest possible inflation, inflation that meets the criterion for joining the euro area,” Dobrev said. 

He recalled that there is a decision of the National Assembly from mid-2024, adopted on the initiative of GERB, which obliges the cabinet to immediately submit a request for an extraordinary convergence report and ask for a date for Bulgaria's accession to the euro area. 

"It is time for political action on the part of the government – to request an ad hoc convergence report so that Bulgaria to guarantee its entry into the euro area from January 1 next year," MP Martin Dimitrov said in a statement on behalf of Yes Bulgaria.

Vazrazhdane  leader Kostadin Kostadinov said that the government cannot argue with mathematics. "We do not meet the criterion by 0.03 percentage points. The inflation in our country according to the falsified data of the National Statistical Institute is 2.60% per year on average for the last 12 months, while according to the criterion it should be 2.57%," he said.