期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2007
卷号：1
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：At the beginning of the 1990s eight central and eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia (EU8) – entered a new political and economic era.1 The collapse of the communist bloc and centrally planned economic systems had paved the way to political and economic freedom and democracy. Since the beginning of the reforms undertaken, the EU8 countries had sought to become members of the European Union (EU). They achieved this goal in May 2004. Since then several EU8 countries have been included in the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) II (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia) and Slovenia joined the euro area on 1 January 2007. All other EU8 countries are expected to join the euro area as well but only as soon as they fulfil the convergence criteria specified in the Treaty establishing the European Community.2
