Thursday, July 24, 2014

Lithuania to adopt the euro

Lithuania is to be the 19th member state of the EU to adopt the common currency effective of 1 January 2015.

According to data from the World Bank, Lithuania suffered a massive blow to their GDP during the financial crisis. In 2009 it plummeted to -14.7 percent. Since then, though, it has bounced back remarkable well. Now, it is 3.7 percent with the unemployment rate at 13.2 percent (% of total labor force).

Luckily, this shows that there is still optimism on behalf of the poor euro, which - in my view - has received far too much criticism. It has been blamed for much of the dismay in the eurozone, although this blame was really to be placed with the individual member countries. In short, many of the problems - for instance in Greece - were caused by irresponsible fiscal policies, not the monetary policy of the ECB. But that's a different topic. For now, let's just applaud the good news.

Read more on the EU's website. 

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