ROMANIA: THE WAY TO EURO

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the Romanian process to join the euro, under the terms of the current economic-financial crisis. The purpose of this study is to analyze the degree of achieving real and nominal convergence criteria, along with offering perspectives regarding European monetary integration. The adoption of the unique currency represents an important challenge and opportunity for Romania during the post-adherence period, which forces the political and administrative environment to conceive and implement coherent and responsible politics meant to ensure a simultaneous fulfillment of nominal and real convergence criteria of the Romanian economy. The results of this analysis illustrate that, despite the fact that the Romanian economy recorded significant progresses on the fulfillment of the Maastricht criteria, the current economic context has introduced an additional uncertainty factor and significantly made the adoption of a single currency harder, and the enforcement of real convergence criteria has become much more difficult. Under these circumstances, the National Bank of Romania gave up the target that 2015 represented, and also the one of establishing a new target-date to enter the eurozone, the perspective of joining a single currency exceeding the horizon of this decade. In order to achieve a real, profound and sustainable reorganization of the Romanian economy and to successfully recover the discrepancies between Romania and the EU standards, the road to the euro must be paved with much caution and wisdom.