We are not giving up on the euro, says TOP 09. It wants to open a debate on it after the elections

A fixed date for adopting the euro was not included in the SPOLU coalition agreement. At the end of the year, representatives of TOP 09 insisted on this requirement.

According to Miloš Nový, a TOP 09 ´s economic expert, the party has not backed down from its demand. "We are still convinced that the euro has not only political advantages, which the coalition agrees on, but also economic advantages," he told FORUM 24.

"We are not giving up. The report of the government's National Economic Council speaks quite clearly and we are ready to open that debate after the victorious elections," he announced.

The question of whether or not to adopt the euro should be decided at the beginning of any government's mandate, he said, because the process takes roughly three years - two years are needed to be in the ERM II system and then it takes about a year for the European Commission to assess whether all the criteria have been met.

"I assume that we will go into the elections with the assumption that we would adopt the euro in a situation where it proves to be economically advantageous. There is no debate about the political one," Nový thinks.

Asked by FORUM 24, Minister Ženíšek said that the decision to adopt the euro is a matter of the coalition's joint election programme, which is yet to be presented and is now in its final stage. "For TOP 09, the adoption of the euro is a long-term goal and I firmly believe that this will appear in some form in the election programme for this year's elections," he wrote.