Podcast in English
Audio Player
Text size
Bulgarian National Radio © 2025 All Rights Reserved

Business suffers severe damage from Bulgaria's delayed membership in the Eurozone and Schengen

Bulgaria's Minister of Finance Assen Vassilev
Photo: BGNES-archive

''The loss from Bulgaria's delayed membership in the Eurozone and Schengen is between 4% and 5% of the country's GDP'', Bulgaria’s Minister of Finance Assen Vassilev said in an interview for Nova TV. ''The business loses between EUR 250 million and EUR 500 million just from currency conversion. Separately, delaying eurozone membership leads to higher interest rates and less investment'', Minister Vassilev said. 

The losses stemming from Bulgaria’s delayed membership in Schengen are also huge, Minister Vassilev said with regard to the government’s draft decree, according to which Bulgaria should include in an official document the date January 1, 2025, as a target date for adopting the euro. Assen Vassilev said that this act is necessary, because the caretaker cabinet had not written down the date January 1, 2024, as the target date for Eurozone membership, and because it had drafted a budget with a 6.4% deficit.



Последвайте ни и в Google News Showcase, за да научите най-важното от деня!
Listen to the daily news from Bulgaria presented in "Bulgaria Today" podcast, available in Spotify.

More from category

Real estate prices along the Black Sea coast have continued to grow, though more gradually

The real estate market in Bulgaria has steadily been growing in the past few years. There has been talk of a price bubble, inflated to serious proportions at the time of the pandemic, though expectations that it is going to burst have come to nothing...

published on 4/3/25 7:15 AM
Energy Minister Zhecho Stankov

Bulgaria's Chiren gas storage facility boosts capacity by 20 percent

One of the key steps in the expansion of the underground gas storage at Bulgaria's Chiren gas storage facility, the construction of the above-ground infrastructure and the installation of new compressors, has already been completed, Energy Minister..

published on 3/31/25 2:20 PM

Cheap labour is no longer a leading factor in attracting foreign investments in Bulgaria

Transformation – this is the word that most accurately describes the current state of the Bulgarian industry. According to an analysis of sectoral data for the period from 2008 to the beginning of 2024, made by the Institute for..

published on 3/31/25 1:19 PM