Bulgaria's Long-Term Place inside Eurozone - FinMin

Bulgaria's place is unquestionably inside the single currency and it will definitely join the eurozone in the long term, the finance minister has confirmed.

Bulgaria has frozen its application to be part of the euro, but Minister Simeon Djankov told the German Die Zeit it will join after the currency area made further progress and the fiscal pact gets stronger.

"The eurozone should make it imperative that rules are to be abided by and severly punish those countries, which don't" Minister Djankov said in the interview.

"As things stand now, the euro convergence criteria (also known as the Maastricht criteria) are met only by countries, which are outside the eurozone, It makes absolutely no sense to join a club, which breaches its own rules."

"It is not just about the money and the fact that we don't want to bear the burden of debts amassed by undisciplined countries. It is a rule of thumb that countries, which have spent much more than they could afford for years on end, should not be helped unless they commit to radical reforms."

Asked about the tight fiscal policy that the government adopted despite the country’s good finances before the crisis started raging in Europe, Djankov said this made Bulgaria stand out.

"We wanted to show that we are different. In 1997, we suffered a disastrous banking and financial crisis. We found that those who lived for some time careless and spent too much, finally had to pay the price. Bulgaria had learned its lesson."