But euros also are in circulation in dozens of countries and overseas territories ranging from the North Atlantic to the Pacific. In Europe, Montenegro, Vatican Vatican City and San Marino, and the principalities of Andorra and Monaco, have used the euro since its inception. And in the province of Kosovo Kosovo technically still part of Serbia administered by the United Nations United Nations the euro circulates alongside the Serbian dinar.
"The ECB does not either encourage nor deter third countries from using the euro," President Jean-Claude Trichet recently declared. "The adoption of the euro creates the right conditions for economic prosperity by providing low inflation and low interest rates," he said recently. When newly independent East Timor East Timor adopted the dollar after seceding from Indonesia in 1999, the U.
S. Treasury dispatched planeloads of paper money and tons of small-denomination coins to the impoverished Pacific nation. Montenegro, for example, switched to the euro after having adopted the German mark in the 1990s.
At the time, the tiny nation along with Serbia was still part of Yugoslavia. But Montenegro opposed the hard-line policies of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic Slobodan Milosevic, and feared he would use his control over the Yugoslav currency to economically destabilize the small state of 600,000 people. The country which aspires to EU membership but is not even close to starting entry talks now relies only on euros already in circulation, said Nikola Fabris, chief economist at Montenegro s Central Bank.
Kosovo where the ethnic Albanian majority is seeking independence for the province also is a "passive" member of the eurozone. Representation on the ECB is restricted to official EU members using the euro: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, and now Slovenia. Fourteen West African nations tied to the euro club through the CFA franc, a joint currency set up by France after independence in the 1960s, also are excluded from ECB representation.
Some European overseas territories are represented in the ECB decision-making process through their mother countries, including the French departments of Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique and Reunion; Portugal s Madeira and Azores islands, and Spain s Canary Islands. Dozens of other entities, including overseas territories such as the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon; Mayotte; French Polynesia; New Caledonia; and Wallis and Futuna are linked to the euro via peg arrangements or managed floating rates.
Slovenia becomes the first of the 10 nations most of them ex-communist countries that joined the EU in 2004 to use the euro. Cyprus and Malta are slated to adopt the currency in 2008. Associated Press writers Garetina Kraja in Pristina, Serbia, and Predrag Milic in Podgorica, Montenegro, contributed to this report.
2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
News RSS