The European Central Bank (ECB) is today publishing its Convergence Report 2014, which assesses the progress made by eight Member States of the European Union (EU) in fulfilling their obligations regarding the achievement of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
The report deals with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia (assessed for the first time), Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It examines whether a high degree of sustainable convergence has been achieved in these countries (economic convergence) and gauges compliance with the statutory requirements to be fulfilled by national central banks to become an integral part of the Eurosystem (legal convergence). When assessing the sustainability of convergence, the report also takes due account of both the new enhanced economic governance framework of the EU and the strength of the institutional environment in each country, including in the area of statistics.
In this report, Lithuania has been assessed in somewhat more depth than the other countries under review. This is because the Lithuanian authorities have expressed their country’s intention to adopt the euro as of 1 January 2015.