Croatia fits bill to join euro club, EU says

Croatia is ready to adopt the euro at the start of next year, bringing the number of eurozone member states to 20, the European Commission announced on Wednesday.

The conclusion was based on the commission's 2022 Convergence Report, which assesses the progress that Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden have made toward joining the eurozone. They are the seven non-euro EU states that are legally committed to adopting the euro.

A final decision on Croatia's euro adoption will be made in the first half of July, after discussions in the Eurogroup and the European Council and after the European Parliament and the European Central Bank have given their opinions.

Croatia, with 3.9 million people, joined the European Union on July 1, 2013. Its current currency is called the kuna.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission's executive vice-president for an economy that works for people, said that "it shows that the euro remains an attractive and successful global currency".

"The Croatian people can now look forward to joining more than 340 million citizens already using the euro as their currency, a rock of stability in these turbulent times," said European Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic applauded the decision. "Croatia will soon become a member of the eurozone, thus achieving one of our strategic goals," he said in a tweet.

The euro entered into circulation on Jan 1, 2002. All EU member states are in principle committed to adopting the currency once they fulfill the conditions but there is no set timetable and it is up to member states to take the necessary steps.

The report also assessed other candidates and concluded that they still didn't meet the required criteria, with Bulgaria falling short of the price stability requirement and Romania meeting none of the criteria.

The euro has taken a hit since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Feb 24, with its value falling more than 6 percent against the US dollar.