Brussels, 12/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - The president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, hopes his country can join the euro by 2017.
“I think we could manage to join the euro by 2017; let's hope we can do it”, said Zeman on Wednesday 11 June. Previously, Czech politicians and business circles have tended to talk about 2019.
The Czech president replaced eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus in 2013. He explained: “We export 80% of our output and three out of four exporters back euro adoption to avoid being exposed to exchange rate risks”. The European Commission's spring economic forecasts suggest that Czech GDP will grow by 2% in 2014 and 2.4% in 2015, after falling by 0.9% in 2013. The country's public deficit was 1.5% in 2013 and is expected to rise to 1.9% in 2014, but meets the Maastricht criterion of being below 3% of GDP. Likewise for Czech public debt, which is expected to fall from 46% of GDP in 2013 to 44.4% in 2014. Czech inflation is low (1.4% in 2013, 0.8% in 2014), as is unemployment, which currently stands at less below 7% of the working population. (MB)