Poland: euro good but it might have to wait
The Associated Press
Published: February 6, 2009
WARSAW, Poland: Poland's Prime Minister said Friday that the global economic crisis had threatened his 2012 target for signing up to the euro.
The Polish currency, the zloty, has been badly battered by the financial crisis, depreciating sharply against the dollar and euro over past months as investors abandoned emerging economies like Poland.
Before adopting the euro, prospective members are required to spend at least two years in an exchange rate mechanism that demands criteria including low and controlled inflation, healthy public finances and a budget deficit below 3 percent. Meeting the 2012 target would require Poland to start that process this year.
"We set a schedule with a goal of 2012, and when we set up that date nobody in the world knew that the degree of the economic crisis in the world and the region would be this serious," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"We are going to carry out our (euro) project, but we are going to be flexible because we don't want to lead to negative results," he said. "We want Poland and Poles to benefit from this and the adoption process."
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The main opposition party, Law and Justice, has opposed Tusk's 2012 target date. It wants to delay joining the euro zone, fearing it could spark high inflation.
Tusk said he will talk with opponents to drum up support for joining the euro "relatively quickly" while also "protecting Poles from potential negative results."
He said he was not willing to drop the idea of adopting the common currency in the near term.
"You can clearly see today, more than any other time, that it's better to be a member of a strong currency that no one can meanly attack," Tusk said.
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