Lithuania Set to Adopt EUR Next year

The European Union is giving Lithuania the green light to adopt the euro currency starting next year.

Ministers from the 28-nation bloc on Wednesday cleared the final legal hurdle for Lithuania to become the 19th member of the currency zone encompassing some 330 million people. The country had been given preliminary approval in June.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said adopting the euro will strengthen the Baltic nation’s economy.

Alluding to the tensions with Russia over Ukraine , he added deeper integration with western Europe “means greater security as well.”

Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors, Estonia and Latvia , are already members of the euro. All three countries achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The euro is just emerging from years of financial stress following debt problems in a number of countries.

via Kitco

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza