The Euro is just another little carrot on a stick that EU diddles in
front of new members. It gives the eurocrats leverage to influence
economic policy of the new members, while the EU is restricting the
expansion of the Schengen border and the free flow of workforce, thus
treating the new member states like second-rate citizens.
Slovenia should give the Euro the finger and adopt a more
capitalist tax system, like Slovakia and Lithuania. If the EU can’t
handle some healthy competition, its reason for existance is truly
questionable. Right now its reason for existance seems to be to support
the French farmers and keeping goat shit off the streets of Paris.
  Oh, as far as news reporting - that’s a classic.

     by crni on July 11, 2005 at 6:39 am

I still say the Euro is a silly fad.

     by Katja on July 11, 2005 at 7:11 am

Thank God, my personal happiness is completely independant of whether we would adopt Euro or not.And to crni: a more capitalist tax system is a way towards more poverty and US’s way of life. Do we want that? I mean, I always thought Europe should be proud of its social-state tradition and long history through which a modern european perception of a state was born: a state that should exist to give its inhabitants an opportunity to live a worthy life and not merely to serve industry and the market.

     by Dr S on July 11, 2005 at 8:41 am

I couldn’t care less about euro. Tolar is well now, and adopting
euro would mean nothing but giving away the sovereignty we’ve gained in
the last 15 years. Plus, all the good things that were supposed to be
here after becoming the EU member, are still far far away.Just like the Swedish say: Europa ja, euro nej! :-D 

     by Dr. Kruegell on July 11, 2005 at 10:12 am

I’m actually looking forward to the euro for the simple reason that my brain gets overloaded calculating in thousands and tens of thousands. (Not to mention millions) The euro will be a great relief for the arithmetically-impaired like myself.

     by Michael M. on July 11, 2005 at 12:51 pm

I couldn’t help noticing that there is a new 500-tolar coin which has a silvery ring around a gold-colored center, just like the 2-euro coin. The size, too, is fairly similar. Given the fact that 500 tolar is just a little over 2 euros,  am I correct in assuming that the Slovenian national bank is already gearing up for the transition?

     by cronopio on July 11, 2005 at 12:59 pm

Well, there will be a "practical" difference, at least in my case
(and probably some other people’s too)… mostly using cards to pay for
stuff, and rarely carrying more than 2000 SIT in my "pocket".
Meaning… we’ll probably have to switch to using a medieval pouch for
(unfortunately not golden) coins since most of that value is in coins,
while keeping a credit card in another "folder". :)) That is, apart
from the short time between ATM cash withdrawal and making a cash
payment, there won’t be many banknotes in our lives.So no need for a standard issue wallet anymore. ;) 

     by Dr. Kruegell on July 11, 2005 at 1:09 pm

Re Michael:I’m actually looking forward to the euro for the simple reason that my
brain gets overloaded calculating in thousands and tens of thousands.Oh,
that’s not too hard, given the fact that most of the cellphones already
incorporate a calculator and/or an exchange converter; getting to keep your own country’s monetary policy is a better cause.However…
something that would in my opinion make our EU lives much easier… is
convincing the French, the Italians, and some of the rest of the crowd,
to speak English… And of course make Britain use metric system and
drive on the right lane of the road… :D 

     by Dr. Kruegell on July 11, 2005 at 1:14 pm

Dr. S: The European social state is falling apart. The heavy taxes,
population decline and the mentality that the state should take care of
everything are its bane. Especially in the light of the changes that
happened after the fall of Berlin wall. There is global competition now
and Europe needs to wake up and rise to the challenge. A lot of
Europeans rely on the state not only to provide them opportunities, but actual jobs. There is a difference.
I would like to see a compromise - free education and socialized
medicine but lower taxes and less state involvement in other areas of
economy.  

     by crni on July 11, 2005 at 1:24 pm

cronopio: You’re right. Slovenia is hell-bent on adopting the euro by early 2007. And they seem to have their coins picked out already, as I recently learned.dr. kruegell:
Unfortunately, I don’t even know how to use the calculator on my cell
phone. I tried to activate it once and ended up calling a 090 number
and talking for three hours with a dominatrix. Life can be hard on the incompetent.

     by Michael M. on July 11, 2005 at 2:02 pm

cronopio: It was formally decided (by the government and the BoS) that Slovenia join the eurozone as soon as possible about, I’d say, two to three years ago. So, not only have we been gearing up for the transition, we are (technically) ready as we speak and have been so even before the actual EU-entry (leaving economic rationale and doubts about actually going through with it aside..)Personally, as an ordinary citizen, I’m all for the euro (I hereby risk being called indoctrinated by crni, I suppose :) since it in fact does make my travelling plans across the old continent a whole lot easier, to mention just one benefit. But as the national governments have been left to solve their economic situation as they see fit (so far they should be given merit points for devising 25 different ways of doing so), I think the real question is - will the EU be able to reform itself to produce something more efficient or not. Can it work? Yes, but on different premises and without the (economic) nationalism present in every single debate nowadays. And especially without any conspiracy theories. Eurocratic institutions are too inflexible to be able to conjure up something like that, as far as I know them :)

     by BoS insider on July 11, 2005 at 3:10 pm

Re the 500 tolar coins: all four “circulating” 500 tolar coins issued so far were really mainly just commemorative issues (2002 Football Championship, 2003 Year of the Disabled, 2004 Jurij Vega and 2005 Falcon Movement). Although they are occasionally found in circulation, their volume is minuscule compared to the real circulation coins (the same goes for the 100 SIT coin from the 10th anniversary of independence in 2001). The highest-valued ordinary circulation coins are the 50 SIT coins. As the Bank of Slovenia explained when they introduced them in 2003, part of the reason was to start getting people familiar with the idea of coins not being worthless any more (as has been the case with dinar and tolar coins of the last few decades), but part of the reason was also that coins are more durable than banknotes, so introducing the 20 and 50 SIT coins was a more economical decision than printing new issues of the 20 and 50 SIT banknotes (whose original issue was in 1992, so they are fairly worn by now; the 10 SIT coin was introduced in 2000 for the same reason).

Re Michael on calculating in thousands and hundreds of thousands: I really don’t see why this would be any more complicated than calculated in units and fractions of units (i.e. cents or pennies or whatever). It’s all simply a question of what figures you are used to dealing with. It seems that I have the opposite problem than you, because whenever I think of e.g. 10 or 20 euros, I have to actively force myself to realize that this is in fact a non-negligible sum of money. For some reason, the difference between 1000 SIT and 2000 SIT feels much greater than that between 5 EUR and 10 EUR. The effects of this when I go shopping for books on amazon.com are catastrophic

     by ill-advised on July 11, 2005 at 3:53 pm

BoS Insider: Don’t get me wrong, I think a common currency makes
a lot of sense and I am actually looking forward to the Euro. I just
feel like the Euro is sometimes abused to influence economic policy of
the new members.

     by crni on July 12, 2005 at 5:10 am