Under the government’s official calendar, Romania should adopt the euro as its national currency in 2024, Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici has said, as quoted by the Ziarul Financiar daily.

A memorandum with this aim will be endorsed this week and the timetable including all the stages of the process will be unveiled in December.

"This was discussed [and agreed upon] in the Committee [for the adoption of the euro]," Teodorovici reportedly emphasised.

The ruling majority’s leader Liviu Dragnea has also announced that Romania’s government will set up a committee to evaluate the fundamentals and draft a calendar for adopting the euro by 2024 by the government this week. 

The committee’s role will be to coordinate sub-committees to elaborate recommendations on fiscal and monetary policies, besides those on other areas such as labour, education, healthcare and public services.

None of the countries in Central and Southeast Europe have committed to adopting the euro. However, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania meet all the formal criteria to join the euro area, the European Commission said on May 23 in its 2018 Convergence Report.

Romania meets only one of the criteria for joining the eurozone, the criterion on public finances. The report noted that in terms of legislation, incompatibilities concern the independence of the central bank, the prohibition of monetary financing and central bank integration into the ESCB at the time of euro adoption. Romania does not fulfil the criterion on price stability, for instance. The average inflation rate in the country during the 12 months to March 2018 was 1.9% and it is expected to rise. Romania does not fulfil the criterion on the convergence of long-term interest rates, partly given that the average long-term interest rate in Romania in the year to March 2018 was 4.1%, above the reference value of 3.2%.