International conference – 10 years of the €uro in Slovakia

On 11 January 2019 Národná banka Slovenska hosted an international conference in Bratislava entitled “10 years of the €uro in Slovakia“, which looked at Slovakia’s experience with the euro after ten years of euro area membership and at the future direction of the euro area.

At the opening of the conference, NBS Governor Jozef Makúch said: “Slovakia has been a model of economic policymaking; the costs and benefits of euro adoption were clearly evaluated in advance, and the potential impact of the euro on all segments of the economy was taken into account. We are also evaluating the euro’s impact in hindsight, and today’s conference is an example of that activity.”

The conference was divided into two discussion panels.

The first panel focused on macroeconomic aspects of euro area membership and began with a keynote speech by Yves Mersch, a member of the ECB’s Executive Board. The other participants in the panel discussion included Elena Kohútiková (VÚB Bank, Slovakia), Joaquín Almunia (Centre for European Policy Studies), Biswajit Banerjee (Slovak Finance Ministry), Ewald Nowotny (Oesterreichische Nationalbank), Ľudovít Ódor (NBS) and Athanasios Orphanides (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The second panel discussion was devoted to the euro’s impact on different sectors of the Slovak economy. The keynote speech was given by Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kažimír, who was joined on the panel by Ivan Šramko (Council for Budget Responsibility), Igor Barát (former government plenipotentiary for the introduction of the euro in Slovakia), Júlia Čillíková (NBS), Peter Mihók (Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and Regina Ovesny-Straka (Volksbank Steiermark).

During the conference, Governor Makúch presented the NBS Governor’s Award for outstanding dissertations or doctoral theses in economics to the authors of three dissertations completed in 2018.

At the close of the conference, NBS Deputy Governor Ľudovít Ódor said: “The ten years of the euro in Slovakia have demonstrated how a country can prosper within the monetary union. When the crisis struck, Slovakia was well prepared, and its subsequent economic results have outperformed those of several [EU] countries which still retain their own currency. For the continuance of this success, it is crucial to complete euro area reform and not to slacken in either fiscal or structural policies”.

Martina Vráblik Solčányiová
NBS Spokesperson

National Bank of Slovakia
Communications Section
Imricha Karvasa 1, 813 25 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Tel.: +421-2-5787 2142, +421-2-5865 2142, +421-2-5787 2169, +421-2-5865 2169
Internet: http://www.nbs.sk

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