Publication

This paper assesses the skepticism Central European (CE) countries including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have towards entering the eurozone. The authors find that the following factors play an important role in this skepticism: 1) the instability of the economic situation in the eurozone, the uncertainty of changes in its political architecture, the appearance that its new structures are overly complex, and concerns about the unknowns of the Greek economic crisis; and 2) domestic factors in the CE countries, such as, positive effects of national monetary policies (i.e., free-floating currency regimes in most countries), a skeptical public, and institutional underdevelopment.