Euractiv_ivan_sramko.mpg

These days the economy does not behave as usual. During the global crisis relationship between the national product, exchange rates or productivity is far from standard. Therefore, it is very difficult to abstract the impacts of euro adoption away from global crisis. The reliable analysis of euro adoption in Slovakia will thus be further delayed. Nevertheless, there is few things related to euro we can already note. For instance, we can sum up that transaction costs decreased in the economy after the euro adoption which was not a good news for banks but all others made a profit from that. The gains of the banks went down by 50% in 2008 partly due to lost profits from currency hedging. Moreover, we could obtain cheaper capital and there is no exchange rate risk any more. Of course, global crisis highlighted t he stabilization role of the eurozone which could protect Slovakia from very volatile exchange rate. The long term benefits of euro adoption like increase in foreign direct investments, in international trade or in GDP growth could be revealed later – by more detailed analysis. I would also like to mention that euro adoption is especially crucial in times when global investments decrease. Recently, Slovakia attracted quite a few FDI – most notably from KIA Motors – which were for sure influenced by the eurozone accession as well.