Bulgaria will most likely enter the Eurozone in 2026, reported the Belgian newspaper Politico. Experts and politicians quoted by the publication are convinced that the target date of January 1, 2025 will not be met – not only because of the political turmoil in Bulgaria, but also because of constant inflation and the lack of public support.
“We are in the midst of a political crisis,” said Bulgarian Socialist MEP Petar Vitanov. That would make it “impossible” for the country to join the eurozone by the start of the year. “We really don’t know what the next government will be and if this will be one of their priorities,” he said, as quoted by Politico.
Even before the assembly government fell, the country signaled that it might miss its planned entry date. Bulgaria originally intended to join the single European currency in early 2024, but had to delay that goal by a year last year because it did not yet meet the criteria for joining, Politico reported.
January 2026 “at the earliest” would be more realistic, given the technical challenges of switching from the national currency to the euro, according to Cinzia Alcidi, senior research fellow at the Brussels-based think tank CEPS.
Joining the eurozone is an EU process where countries are assessed by the European Central Bank before EU finance ministers, MEPs and heads of government discuss the matter.
The “convergence criteria” a country must meet to qualify include a stable exchange rate, meeting government deficit-to-debt ratio targets and bringing national legislation into line with EU law.
The next ECB report on Bulgaria – which will determine whether it is ready to join – is expected before the summer.
Inflation remains a problem. To join, Bulgaria needs an average of no more than 1.5 percentage points above the pace of the three “best performing” EU countries – a fuzzy category that creates a gray area for the exact inflation figure needed. The last country to join the eurozone, Croatia in 2023, benefited from selective data to join despite the higher rate.
“The only obstacle for Bulgaria is the inflation criteria,” says Zholt Darvas, a senior fellow at the Bruegel economic think tank in Brussels. He believes that the country is “in a good budgetary position – low public debt, budget deficit under control.”
The current forecast of 2.9% inflation in 2025 would “suggest that Bulgaria could join in 2026,” Darvas said. He added that there was “some room for manoeuvre” on whether the same gray area that allowed Croatia to join in 2023 could be used to shorten Bulgaria’s accession deadline, but added that it “must be justified”.
Among the political class in Bulgaria, membership in the Eurozone is an idea that is easily accepted. But the public is proving more difficult to convince, Politico writes.
A Eurobarometer survey in Bulgaria last year found lower-than-average support for accession and higher-than-average concern about issues such as price-fixing during the transition.
Politico tries to explain Bulgaria’s weak support for the euro to its readers by citing anonymous “senior EU officials who have said that Russian-sponsored disinformation plays a role in this unpopularity.” According to the publication, the Bulgarians did not want the euro because of “Russian disinformation”.
More on the topic: Kiril Petkov on the record: Ursula told me to figure out how to get around the Eurozone rules
