Wednesday, January 24- European Union

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

On December 31, 2006, The EUObserver published an article entitled "Solvenians Greet New Year with the New Currency." No longer a Yugoslav country, Slovenia decided to join the European Union entirely, including its currency. This two-week exchange period went into effect on January 1, 2007. This is being done in an effort to secure the use of a single European currency, rather than individual countries holding their own. Slovenia hopes this currency change will help to increase trade.
Slovenia is one of ten new countries to recently join the European Union, and "has been regarded as a political and economic success story within the group of ten newcomers," states the article. One worry was that some corporate companies within the country would take advantage of the currency exchange and boost prices, but governent officials were previously warned, and there does not seem to be many issues raised.
I think it is a very positive act that Slovenia is doing, and I think it will be very beneficial to their economy. The European Union, I have recently learned, is very powerful in the world's economy, which makes them very powerful as a whole. As a smaller country, benefits that may come with being part of the European Union would never exist for them if they were independent from the union. This will increase their trade, and they will often be communicating with other countries within the union. They will now have more involvment with everything that goes on in both the political and the economic world, and this will make them stronger as a country. They will hold more power and more knowledge will be available to them directly through the union rather than finding out later. This involvment will directly boost their economy, and I think this boost will appear sooner rather than later.

The information in this blog was taken from the article located at the following web address:

http://euobserver.com/19/23139