Behind an imposing wooden cathedral in Sofia, in a complex where a statue of Lenin once stood, the man who leads the 20-member eurozone finance ministers chooses his words carefully. “I am firmly convinced that Bulgaria will join the Eurozone in 2025,” said Pascal Donohue. “The question is when your country will adopt the euro as its currency. Not if.”
Surrounded by the country’s prime minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister, his presence carried great European political weight. A month later, the coalition government collapsed and the three ministers were removed from office. Donohoe’s visit, which was meant to bolster Bulgaria’s faltering bid to become the 21st country to use the euro, turned out to be ill-timed.
Experts and politicians who spoke to Politico 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 ongoing inflation and the lack of public support.
“We are in the middle of a political crisis,” said Bulgarian socialist MEP Petar Vitanov. This would make it “impossible” for the country to join the eurozone by the beginning of the year. The country’s sixth national election since 2021 will be held in June. “We really don’t know what the next government will be and whether this will be one of its priorities,” he says.
Even before the government fell, the country was giving signals that it might miss the planned entry date. Then-Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said in January that the goal was “not sacred”. Bulgaria originally intended to join the single currency in early 2024, but last year had to postpone that goal by a year because it did not yet meet the criteria for joining.
According to Chintia Alcidi, senior research fellow at the Brussels-based think tank CEPS, “at the earliest” January 2026 would be a more realistic date given the technical challenges of moving to a national currency.
Several political leaders, including the country’s central bank governor, have raised the prospect of entry in mid-2025 if the January entry date cannot be met – hence Donohoe’s careful wording that he expects membership “in 2025.” .
But officials and experts involved in the technical aspects of the accession told Politico that joining in the middle of the year would be atypical. Countries usually join at the beginning of the year for administrative reasons.
Bulgarian MEP Eva Maydel of the center-right EPP group said she was “optimistic about the accession date in 2025,” adding that “it could be January 1, it could be later.”
Affected by rising prices
Joining the eurozone is a typically EU-heavy process in which 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 and 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 continues to be a problem. To join, Bulgaria must achieve average inflation of no more than 1.5 percentage points above that of the three “best performing” EU countries – a vague category that creates a gray area about the exact amount of inflation needed. Croatia, the latest to join the eurozone in 2023, benefited from selective data selection when it was allowed to join despite the higher rate.
“The only obstacle for Bulgaria is the inflation benchmark,” said Zholt Darvash, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel. “It is in a good budgetary position – low public debts, budget deficits under control”.
The country’s current inflation forecast of 2.9% in 2025 “suggests that Bulgaria could join in 2026,” says Darvash. 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 this “must to be substantiated”.
In theory, Sofia will request a new convergence report from the ECB towards the end of this year, in which there will be a low enough level of inflation to be able to join in mid-2025. But in practice, EU officials who will be involved in the technical process , question whether this would be feasible.
Russian disinformation
Among the political class in Bulgaria, eurozone membership is an easy sell. But the public is proving more difficult to convince.
In a Eurobarometer survey last year, Bulgarians expressed lower-than-average support for accession and higher-than-average concern about issues such as price-fixing during the transition.
Senior EU officials told Politico that Russian-sponsored disinformation contributed to this unpopularity.
“I still believe that the majority of Bulgarians would prefer to be part of the Eurozone. I am not blaming only Russian propaganda here. Yes, it exists. But in general, those who lag behind are the Bulgarian politicians,” says MEP Vitanov.
Apart from the problem of controlling inflation, Bulgaria is in a relatively good position for joining the Eurozone, according to a number of experts and officials.
The country’s currency, the lev, has been tied to the euro since 1999, and Bulgaria has been in the EU’s banking union since 2020 – steps which MEP Maydel said showed a “very, very clear commitment” to joining.
Concerns about Bulgaria’s accession timetable have not stopped senior EU officials like Donohoe from continuing to beat the drum.
Last month, the country also received approval from the eurozone countries, when their heads of government praised Bulgaria’s progress. But despite the EU’s sustained public support for the January 2025 target, senior officials admit it almost certainly won’t happen. As one of them says: “Not a word can be said about this”.
