The ten countries that joined the EU in 2004 face the necessity of adopting the single currency. To evade asymmetric shocks and not to threaten the pursuance of the common monetary policy they must achieve economic convergence in both nominal and real variables. In this article the new EU Member States' progress in fulfilling Maastricht nominal criteria has been analyzed - fiscal balance, public debt, price stability, long-term interest rates convergence and exchange rate stability. The European Commission 2006-07 forecasts of these variables have been presented. Progress in achieving real convergence in terms of GDP per capita has been analyzed. A brief literature survey of optimum currency area criteria fulfillment has been made to assess new members' progress in that aspect. In general the analyzed period spanned from 1995-2005 but the choice of particular indicators' periods depended on data availability.

Keywords: asymmetric shock, economic integration, monetary union, nominal convergence, real convergence.

  Tomasz Bernhard, Progress of the New EU Member States in Fulfilling the Criteria of Eeconomic Convergence - plik pdf; (210 KB)