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The Original 11 - 01 Jan 1999
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The original members of the eurozone were Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It came into being on 01 Jan 1999, with the
fixing of exchange rates between the national currencies of the founder members.
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Milestones
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01 Jan 2001
Greece joined, to become the 12th member of the club.
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01 Jan 2002
euro notes and coins came into circulation. National currencies were abolished at the end of
February.
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01 Jan 2007
Slovenia became the 13th member country in a flawless changeover. The former national currency
was the tolar (currency code SIT) with an exchange rate of 239.854 tolars to the euro
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01 Jan 2008 Malta and Cyprus joined. EU Finance ministers gave their approval at the meeting held
on 10th July 2007. One euro replaced 0.585274 Cyprus pounds and 0.4293 Maltese lira.
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2009 Slovakia expects to meet euro adoption criteria to achieve entry in 2009
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2010 Estonia had hoped to join in 2007 but now aims at 2010.
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2011 Latvia is struggling to keep with inflation within EU targets. On 22/10/2007 the Finance
Minister but thought 2011 or 2012 achievable. Lithuania also struggled in 2006 and although it just
missed the EU target, was rejected because it failed the sustainability test. Now it also hopes to join
in 2010-2011 .
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2012 The Czech Finance Ministry has adopted a changeover plan that foresees entry in 2012
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2013 After realising that 2010 is unachievable, Hungary has now put forward a plan to join the
eurozone in 2013.
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No date
Poland has not yet given a date but aims to start talking about accession in 2009
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No plans
Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom all have an opt-out. The same privilege is not offered to
new members of the EU.
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De facto users
Apart from Slovenia which has joined the eurozone, other former Yugoslav republics including Croatia
have their own currencies but are de-facto users of the euro for a wide range of transactions.
European micro-states including Monaco, Liechtenstein, Vatican City, San Marino and Andorra are
either de-facto users or have adopted the euro as their official currency.
Some former French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies use the Central African Franc, tied on a fixed
exchange rate to the euro of 100 CFA Francs = 0.152449
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