Since the introduction of the euro in 11 EU Member States on 1 January 1999, six other countries have adopted the single currency, the most recent being Estonia on 1 January 2011. This means that ten EU Member States do not yet participate fully in EMU, i.e. they have not yet adopted the euro. Two of these, Denmark and the United Kingdom, gave notification that they would not participate in Stage Three of EMU. As a consequence, convergence reports for these two countries only have to be provided if they so request. Given the absence of such a request from either country, this report examines eight countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. All eight countries are committed under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (Treaty) to adopt the euro, which implies that they must strive to fulfil all the convergence criteria.
This report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 describes the framework used for the examination of economic and legal convergence. Chapter 3 provides a horizontal overview of the key aspects of economic convergence. Chapter 4 contains the country summaries, which provide the main results of the examination of economic and legal convergence. Chapter 5 examines in more detail the state of economic convergence in each of the eight EU Member States under review and provides an overview of the convergence indicators and the statistical methodology used to compile them. Finally, Chapter 6 examines the compatibility of the national legislation of the Member States under review, including the statutes of their NCBs, with Articles 130 and 131 of the Treaty and with the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (Statute). [...]
