Four years after Estonia and one after Latvia, the third Baltic country, Lithuania, has also adopted the euro since Thursday XNUMX January. With the blessing of European and national political and financial leaders, but also with the not entirely resolved perplexities of a not insignificant share of its three million inhabitants, Lithuania therefore enters the Eurozone, the nineteenth member state in order of time. An obligatory choice as prescribed by the European Treaties, but also inevitable precisely as a consequence of the analogous decision already taken by the other two Baltic Republics. A decision that could have left the country out of the loop of foreign direct investments, vital for the economy of a small state devoid of natural resources.
But the adoption of the euro, as the chairman of the board of the Bank of Lithuania Vitas Vasiliauskas underlined in recent days in an interview with Euronews, “is not just an economic project. It is also a political project: now, with all three Baltic countries integrated into the euro system, I think people can feel safe."
However, not all Lithuanians, as evidenced by the repeated polls on the subject, declare themselves in favor of the introduction of the single currency. Not only because they fear that, as has happened in other EU countries (we Italians know this well), the change of currency could lead to a dangerous increase in prices. But also, and perhaps above all, because of a reason that is particularly felt in Lithuania: the very close symbolic connection between the litas, the Lithuanian currency which returned to circulation in 1991 after the long parenthesis of the ruble, and the national independence regained with the end of the harsh Soviet occupation.
Apart from the symbolic perception of monetary sovereignty, however, the chairman of the board of the Bank of Lithuania, again in the interview with Euronews, recalls that "since 2002 we have had a fixed-rate regime in the litas-euro ratio".
Therefore, adds Vitas Vasiliauskas, "since then we have not been independent from a monetary point of view, in fact it is as if we had adopted the euro twelve years ago". all of Lithuania, from the capital Vilnius to the most remote villages. The former, churned out by the State Mint, at the rate of two million pieces a day. The others, in the absence at the moment of a typography capable of ensuring the very high quality requirements required by the European Central Bank, arrived in Vilnius from Germany last month with three special flights in sufficient quantities for this start of the "changeover": for to be precise, it involved 132 million banknotes for a total weight of 114 tons.
Lithuania's entry into the euro is an example of a virtuous path, this is the opinion expressed by Mario Draghi on the occasion of his visit to Vilnius some time after the European Council and the European Parliament had given the go-ahead in July free to the proposal of the Brussels Commission. Virtuous path completed - is the assessment of the president of the European Central Bank - without external aid and very quickly.
An assessment, this one by Draghi, substantially coincides with that of the vice president of the EU Commission Jyrki Katainen. “Lithuania enters the Eurozone from a strong position thanks to an average growth of its gross domestic product of 3% per year from 2011 onwards, therefore after the very harsh crisis that in 2009-2010 had brought the Baltic country to its knees”, underlined the economic-financial “mind” of the Executive chaired by Juncker.
