Romania and the Monetary Union

Abstract

The first construction of political independent states which achieve a real union for their own coins is European Union. Romania is a part of European Union, so it has to pass up it’s monetary sovereignity and replace Romanian coin (leu) with euro. This will happen only when the Maastricht criteria will be accomplish: inflation rate no more than 1,5 percentage points higher than the average of the three best performing member states of European Union, the ratio of gross government debt to GDP must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding fiscal year, the nominal long-term interest rate must not be more than 2 percentage points higher than in the three lowest inflation member states, joining the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM II) under the European Monetary System (EMS) for two consecutive years and it should not have devalued its currency during the period. In this moment Romania does not accomplish Maastricht criteria. The last Romanian Convergence Program establishes Romanian joining to the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM II) until 2012 and adopting euro coin until 2014. The last dates establish 2017 for adopting euro coin. Romanian integration on monetary European Union means the competition development and completing transition process towards western European states; it means Romania transformation in a state which respects European level of development.