Mihály Varga: it is too early to talk about joining the Eurozone

On Saturday, at the Tranzit festival in Tihany, the head of the ministry added in the discussion entitled “The Two-Euro Song – Consequences of Giving Up the National Currency” that “how can we restore the equilibrium position of the economy as quickly as possible” after two crises.

Fiscal policy must reduce the deficit and the debt, he stated.
He explained: there was a period of economic policy when we were able to fulfill all conditions except the exchange rate fixation, the two most recent crises confirmed that if we had the euro now, the Hungarian economy would have to take much less risk.

He said that the introduction of the euro would also have several advantages from a political point of view. He pointed out that according to the Eurobarometer survey in January of this year, 72 percent of the Hungarian population sympathizes with the introduction of the euro, since everyone wants stability.

He mentioned the abandonment of an independent monetary policy as a disadvantage of the common currency and the fact that the ECB makes its decisions primarily based on the criteria of the core countries, the French, German, Dutch, and Italian criteria, and Hungary may end up on the periphery.

Gyula Pleschinger, member of the Monetary Council of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), another participant in the conversation, added to this: we are now very far from joining the euro zone, because we cannot even meet the Maastricht criteria.