Central bank head: Convergence reports on Bulgaria and the euro are positive

Sofia: We are acquainted with the convergence reports of the European institutions in advance, they are positive, central Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) governor Dimitar Radev said on May 20.

In February 2025, Bulgaria’s government requested special convergence reports from the European Commission and the European Central Bank to show whether Bulgaria meets the criteria for entering the euro zone. The official results are expected on June 4. After the reports are available, the relevant European institutions will decide on admitting Bulgaria to the euro zone as of January 1 2026.

Radev said that BNB is completely calm about the process of adopting the single European currency.

He said that Bulgaria confidently meets the nominal criteria, including those about inflation.

Both BNB and the government are ready, Radev said.

He said that President Roumen Radev’s approach to the Constitutional Court against National Assembly Speaker Natalia Kiselova’s refusal to hold a vote in Parliament on President Radev’s request for a national referendum on adopting the euro in 2026 would not affect the convergence reports.

Dimitar Radev said that if an opinion poll of the public about the euro is conducted in a year, support will be much greater, because they will have felt the benefits.

“All new member states have joined with more or less the same ratio of support and people who are more skeptical, around 50 per cent, in one direction or the other,” the central bank head said.

“A year, two, three after that, support is over 70 per cent almost everywhere. Give me an example of a member state that has joined and is close to us, where prices have increased dramatically, incomes have decreased and savings have evaporated. Quite the opposite,” Dimitar Radev said.

As The Sofia Globe reported earlier on May 20, the Association of Banks in Bulgaria said that is strongly supports Bulgaria’s accession to the euro area from January 1 2026.