15.04.2025

The 2025 budget gave us the direction and the opportunity to deliver on our strategic objective, i.e. Bulgaria’s membership in the euro area. We have never been closer to fulfilling it. This is what Minister of Finance Temenuzhka Petkova told the participants in a business breakfast on ‘Financial Policy and Competitiveness of the Bulgarian Economy’ organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria and the British-Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce.

Mrs. Temenuzhka Petkova recalled that our country had met all the criteria for euro area membership and was awaiting the drafting of extraordinary convergence reports by the European Commission and the European Central Bank. ‘We hope they will be positive as a conclusion and will enable Bulgaria to take its decent place in the euro area as from 1 January 2026 because we have come a long way’, she said.

The Finance Minister also pointed to the large amount of technical work that had been done in order for the administration to be able to fulfil its commitments regarding the introduction of the single European currency. ‘A very comprehensive information campaign on the topic is currently underway. Both the Bulgarian society and the Bulgarian businesses need to hear the real advantages of adopting the euro in Bulgaria’, Mrs. Petkova emphasized. She explained that the purpose of the communication activities was to address the concerns so that everyone could approach the process with confidence, to realign the companies’ activities, and the Bulgarian citizens to arrange their personal finances in a way that would comply with the legislative requirements.

Mrs. Temenuzhka Petkova added that one of the main tasks and a top priority for the government was to restore the stability and sustainability of Bulgaria’s public finance and to fight the grey economy. She stressed the efforts of the government in the active negotiations with the European Commission so as to renegotiate the Recovery and Resilience Plan in order for Bulgaria to be able to absorb as much money as possible and implement as many projects as possible by August 2026, which were extremely important for the Bulgarian economy.