Bulgaria Drops the Lev, Joins Eurozone as 21st Member

The move echoes Slovakia’s 2009 and Croatia’s 2023 switchovers—small, post-socialist economies that joined after years in the ERM-II “waiting room”—but Bulgaria’s path has been bumpier since its 1997 currency-board rescue of a hyperinflation crisis pegged the lev to the Deutsche Mark. Long-term, the enlargement shows the euro’s gravitational pull: even the EU’s poorest and politically volatile member chooses deeper monetary union over sovereignty, while Moscow-leaning voices deploy price-rise fears much as British tabloids did before the U.K.’s 2016 Brexit referendum. On a century scale, the step is another test of Europe’s recurring experiment with shared money—from the Latin Monetary Union of 1865 to the EMS of 1979—highlighting that durable integration depends less on coins than on political trust; Bulgaria’s eighth election in five years suggests that battle is only starting.