Pekanov: It was clear that we will not accept the euro on January 1, 2025.

As it was clear a long time ago, but it is still a pity - Bulgaria will not joined the euro from 1 January 2025. This happens for one main reason - the inflation criterion, according to which inflation must be at most 1.5 percentage points higher than that of the "best performing countries" - a fairly opaque criterion, but above all - absolutely inappropriate for our time. This is what Atanas Pekanov, former deputy prime minister, wrote on Facebook, quoted by Focus.

"It may have been appropriate to measure the inflation benchmark by an absolute difference of 1.5 percentage points to the so-called best performing member states in other periods - when inflation was relatively low everywhere. But it doesn't make much sense to measure like that after the biggest inflation shock in the history of the euro and the period of the biggest differences (standard deviation) in inflation between member countries in history… A bunch of countries from the current members could not enter the Eurozone according to this criterion today.

This at least gives us a little more time to debunk the completely stupid argument that participation in the Eurozone automatically and necessarily leads to an increase in debt. Currently, in some of the more indebted countries that were often claimed to be “bankrupt" (whatever that means) - for example Greece, Cyprus and Portugal - the fastest and largest reduction of government debt to GDP on record is happening...", he also writes.