Slovakia will officially adopt the euro as its currency in January, 2009. The Economic and Financial Affairs Council of EU (ECOFIN) formally adopted the decision to allow Slovakia to use the euro as of January 1, 2009 this past summer. The conversion rate was set at 30,126 Slovak koruna to one euro, which was the exchange rate at the time of the official decision by the EU body.
Slovaks are taking the new currency in already, as they have begun to pick up euro packs now being sold in post offices across the country. “The demand for the euro starter packs was extremely high. We expected high demand, but not to this extent,” Slovak Post Office spokesman Juraj Danielis told AFP.
Post offices and banks around the country plan to sell a total of 1.2 million starter packs worth 500 korunas (16.6 euros, 20.9 dollars) to ease the currency switch on January 1, 2009, according to the Slovak central bank. Post offices and the central bank sold about half of the total volume on the first day, December 1.
“Many post offices in all Slovak towns ran out of their supplies in 30 minutes. People were waiting in queues since early morning,” said Danielis.
The plans to allow Slovakia to use the euro by ECOFIN will increase the number of countries that use the currency to 16. There are now 27 member states, with 15 that currently use the euro: Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia and Finland. See property in Slovakia
The most recent countries to adopt the euro were Cyprus and Malta, which began using it as the official currency on January 1, 2008.
