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Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

ecb.europa.eu

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Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#211

Post by perching_aix »

menaerus wrote: post #204
perching_aix wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it really isn't that inconvenient at all, and some of the caps are outright better now than the crap that preceded them. Bit like how the toilet water use regulations turned out. I even find myself vaguely annoyed now whenever I drink from glass bottles, that those caps are loose. > People are upset because it shows Brussels disfunction Reminds me to that meme where the debated point is what OS is better, and the…

It's a taxpayer's money so why wouldn't the taxpayers have a point if they think that their money is not spent best and, in the context of the global situation, not really efficient at all in making the quality of life of EU citizens any better? To paraphrase this differently: if I as an investor gave you 100M EUR and 24 months, would you be happy to spend it for changing a frigging cap on the bottle or would you rat…

> It's a taxpayer's money so why wouldn't the taxpayers have a point if they think that their money is not spent best

Not what I said.

> in the context of the global situation, not really efficient at all in making the quality of life of EU citizens any better?

Why would all decisions have to be this massively efficient slamdunk of an idea? Things can even be downright specifically bad yet still be generally useful in the grand scheme of things. Things can also be just kind of a stinker sometimes. You don't normally skewer something large over a minor issue. Critique is fine, but then "I don't like it" doesn't hold much weight, certainly not more than "well I do".

> would you rather invest that money and time+people resources on something else?

Are the levers I can and am expected to pull on the same as the EU? I don't think so.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#212

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

epolanski wrote: post #112
storus wrote: post #96

Doubling of the prices overnight coming like in Croatia and many countries before it?

Yes there's an inflation shock at the beginning, then salaries and everything adjusts.

Croatia hasn't really adjusted. Well, maybe it could be said that everybody adjusted one social class downwards. So people who were previously "upper middle class" are now solidly "middle class," people who were "middle class" are now "lower class," etc. The purchasing power of the populace has declined and not yet recovered.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#214

Post by nwellnhof »

Sammi wrote: post #193
raxxorraxor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU institution because of pragmatic and systematic properties. Ultimately to say something is democratic or not is a subjective opinion, but EU proponents have made the mistake to brush such criticism away. Since then the EU is mostly developing in a wrong direction.

Who is not democratically elected? The EU Parliament is directly elected. The EU Council is comprised of EU country head of states, which are all directly elected. The EU Council and EU Parliament then elect the EU Comission. Sounds democratic to me.

The EU Parliament is not democratically elected because votes from member states have a different weight. The election is free but not fair. It's also one of the few parliaments that can't propose laws on their own but can only veto laws proposed by the EU Commission.

The powerful EU Commission being appointed by governments (and again only approved by the Parliament) is a form of executive federalism. This makes the chain of legitimacy longer and longer which is hardly positive for democracy.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#215

Post by raspasov »

epolanski wrote: post #113
csomar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulgaria economy and the average citizen quality of life are not that correlated. You can have one improving while the other is deteriorating. We saw what happened in the US when such a gap became wide enough.

By many metrics (life expectancy, inequality, literacy, poverty rates) the US is a third world country.

You are just plain wrong.

Also, social mobility is preferable to inequality. Inequality is terrible on many levels.

Everyone is poor – low inequality (1)

Everyone is middle class – low inequality (2)

Many poor, few rich – high inequality (3)

Theoretical cases, not observed in the real world:

Few poor, many rich – high inequality (4)

Everyone is rich – low inequality (5)

The metric of "inequality" only scores well with either poverty (1) or average outcomes (2) in the real world. Is that socialism or communism? I forget.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#216

Post by jajko »

raspasov wrote: post #203
petesergeant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things that surprised me when I spent a couple of months in Bulgaria: * Bulgarian support for the EU is pretty low and people didn't think it made their life much better * Bulgarian support for Russia is very high, like 50%, probably due to their historic help in kicking out the Turks

Bulgaria has an internal coherence problem. There are brilliant people but also many who believe bullshit communist fairytales. 1. Many people have unrealistic expectations. In reality, no one is coming to save you, and 99% of the time, you need to save yourself. 2. The Russian propaganda story was taught in schools from 1945 to 1990 and beyond. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, it was still taught by inert…

> The resulting communist regime initially jailed or killed any person who dared speak against it.

That's whole modus operandi of russians entire 20th and 21st century. Really, a cancerous mole that wants to spread at all costs across the face of whole Europe, and the only thing it understands is the rule of stronger dog fucking the rest without a care.

I've grown up in communism too albeit a bit more north, a whole nation enslaved for more than 4 decades by russians. The scars this oppression had left on the soul of my nation are still very visible these days and not going away anytime soon. That depraved nation never even acknowledges atrocities it was doing and still keeps doing on a daily basis.

The saddest part they were very actively shooting/electrocuting people that were just trying to escape to the west, just to show to the rest of population its not worth dreaming of freedom in any way. A milder North korea. I guess dictator's playbooks are very similar everywhere.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#217

Post by mrtksn »

piva00 wrote: post #208
mrtksn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I'm also inclined to believe that it started as a suppression attempt that ended up being a genocide as "an easy solution" to make a problem go away as the dying empire wasn't able to contain it. I recall reading the communications of some Ottoman officials trying to cash out the life insurance policies of the Armenians. Pure evil, honestly.

In that sense the Holocaust was also the "easy solution" to "make the problem go away" when deporting Jews (and other minorities) became too much of a hassle for the Nazis. They didn't start with the idea of "let's kill everyone", it built up from the 1930s process to deport "undesirables", when it became too much work they decided to kill everyone instead. Genocide is genocide, doesn't matter the seed that started i…

Sure, nazis even called it “the final solution”.

The difference is that the the ottomans didn’t have an anti-armenian culture going on and the Ottoman rule wasn’t being legitimized over stuff like “fighting a war against sleazy Armenians who infiltrated us”. It was quite the opposite, with rise of the nationalism in Europe minorities in the empire were the “anti”.

Ottomans didn’t do that because they believed in the inherent evil of the Armenians but because they were responding to those nationalistic movements. The distrust towards Armenians developed with the rebellions that were supported by Russia etc. Armenians weren’t targeted for their Armenianness. In other words none of this would have happened if there were no rebellions. It was done to address a specific problem, can you say the same for the holocaust? Was Hitler trying to address actual troubles that the Jewish minority caused?

Do you know who were/are targeted? The Alawites, it about the people would say things similar things like an anti-semite would say for the Jews. It’s also how you get instantly cancelled in Turkey.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#218

Post by gpderetta »

mrtksn wrote: post #171
kgwgk wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poorly managed suppression of a rebellion Or a too well managed suppression. “ We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”

Could be, I agree. I'm inclined to believe that it become a genocide once the incompetent administrators failed to address the core reasons and thought that it would be easier to make these troubles go away by killing everybody.

Luckily something like this will never happens today, especially in a civilized country.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#219

Post by menaerus »

perching_aix wrote: post #211
menaerus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a taxpayer's money so why wouldn't the taxpayers have a point if they think that their money is not spent best and, in the context of the global situation, not really efficient at all in making the quality of life of EU citizens any better? To paraphrase this differently: if I as an investor gave you 100M EUR and 24 months, would you be happy to spend it for changing a frigging cap on the bottle or would you rat…

> It's a taxpayer's money so why wouldn't the taxpayers have a point if they think that their money is not spent best Not what I said. > in the context of the global situation, not really efficient at all in making the quality of life of EU citizens any better? Why would all decisions have to be this massively efficient slamdunk of an idea? Things can even be downright specifically bad yet still be generally useful i…

> Not what I said.

It's exactly what you were questioning and which is why I gave you the concrete example why people get attached to this particular non-problem.

As for the rest of your comment, I think it went a little bit over your head.

Re: Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

#220

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Discordian93 wrote: post #182
Roark66 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polish here, very much against adopting the euro until our standard of living and growth rate matches Germany (no at least not for next 10 years). Why? Because the disadvantages far out weight the benefits for developing countries. The biggest issue is giving up one of the biggest instrument of control over the economy to a supra-national non-democratic organisation. Surely the monetary policy will follow what is bes…

I agree, It think Spain adopted the Euro too soon and we'd have weathered the GFC better if we still had control of our monetary policy at the time. And we didn't grow as much as we could have in the preceding boom phase.

It's unlikely you'd have had the same boom without joining the euro.
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