Bulgaria and the euro


adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, becoming the 21st member state of the eurozone. When Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007 it committed to join the eurozone and replace its currency, the lev, with the euro. In February 2025, the country officially requested off-cycle assessments of their convergence by the European Commission and ECB to determine the country's readiness. The 2025 convergence reports published on 4 June 2025 concluded that Bulgaria met the convergence criteria. On 8 July 2025, the European Parliament endorsed Bulgaria's entry in the eurozone and the Council of the European Union adopted the final three legislative acts required for the admission.
The lev was first established by the Bulgarian National Bank in 1880. Under a currency board introduced in 1997, the lev was first pegged to the Deutsche Mark. With the lev's 1999 redenomination and the arrival of the euro, the exchange rate was updated to its long-standing fixed peg of 1.95583 BGN = 1 EUR. Between 10 July 2020 and 31 December 2025, the lev remained within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, exiting the mechanism to transition into the euro on 1 January 2026. On that day, the euro became the official currency of Bulgaria, however, during the cash changeover period, the lev and the euro circulated in parallel for cash payments.

Convergence criteria

When it joined the EU in 2007, Bulgaria committed to switching its currency, the lev, to the euro, as stated in the 2005 EU accession treaty. The transition would occur once the country meets all the euro convergence criteria. As the lev was fixed to the Deutsche Mark at par, the lev's peg effectively switched to the euro on 1 January 1999, at the rate of 1.95583 leva = 1 euro, which was the Deutsche Mark's fixed exchange rate to the euro.
Before the Bulgarian euro coins had been designed, the Madara Rider had already been selected as the motif on the obverse of the coins. Two Bulgarian saints, Ivan Rilski and Paisius of Hilendar, are depicted on the Bulgarian euro coins. In this way, Bulgaria is the first Orthodox country to have a Christian character on its euro coins. Bulgaria officially joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on 10 July 2020. Bulgarian government and central bank officials adopted a draft national plan for euro adoption on 30 June 2021, after stating that same day Bulgaria's intention to adopt the euro on 1 January 2024. In May 2022, the government adopted a more definitive version of its euro introduction plan, reaffirming the country's commitment to adopt the euro on the target date. On 21 February 2023, Bulgaria scrapped the idea of adopting the single currency on 1 January 2024 due to an internal political crisis.
The Maastricht Treaty, which Bulgaria acceded to by way of its EU accession treaty, requires that all European Union member states, except Denmark, join the euro once certain economic criteria are met. In November 2007, Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski stated that his goal was to comply with all five convergence criteria by 2009 and adopt the euro in 2012. But Bulgaria did not comply with the requirement to be an ERM II member for at least two years, nor did it satisfy the price stability criterion in 2008. Bulgaria's inflation in the 12 months from April 2007 to March 2008 reached 9.4%, well above the reference value limit of 3.2%.
Bulgaria fulfilled the state budget criterion of only having a maximum deficit of 3% of the country's gross domestic product. The country had posted surpluses since 2003, which in 2007 represented 3.4% of its GDP. Bulgaria also complied with the public debt criteria. During the prior decade, the Bulgarian debt had declined from 50% of GDP to 18% in 2007, and was expected to reach 11% in 2009. Finally, the average for the long-term interest rate during the prior year was 4.7% in March 2008, well within the reference limit of 6.5%. A 2008 analysis said that Bulgaria would not be able to join the eurozone earlier than 2015 due to high inflation and the repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis. Some members of the government, notably economy minister Petar Dimitrov, speculated about unilaterally introducing the euro, which was not well received by the European Commission. Bulgaria met all five criteria in the last off-cycle convergence report published by the European Central Bank in June 2025.

Joining ERM II

The Bulgarian lev has been pegged to the euro since the latter was launched in 1999, at a fixed rate of €1 = BGN 1.95583, through a strictly managed currency board. Prior to that, the lev was pegged at par to the German mark. While the currency board which pegs Bulgaria to the euro has been seen as beneficial to the country fulfilling criteria so quickly, the ECB pressured Bulgaria to drop it as it did not know how to let a country using a currency board join the euro. The Bulgarian Prime Minister stated the desire to keep the currency board until the euro was adopted. However, factors such as high inflation, an unrealistic exchange rate with the euro and the country's low productivity were negatively affected by the system.
Simeon Dyankov, Bulgaria's finance minister, said in September 2009 that Bulgaria planned to enter ERM II that November, but this was delayed. It was then delayed further due to an increased budget deficit, outside the Maastricht criteria. From 2011 to 2020, Bulgaria's non-membership of the ERM II was the primary factor that prevented euro membership, as Bulgaria met the other criteria for euro adoption. In July 2011, Bulgaria's Minister of Finance Simeon Dyankov stated that the government would not adopt the euro as long as the European sovereign-debt crisis was ongoing.
In January 2015, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov changed approach and said that it was possible for Bulgaria to join ERM II before the end of 2018. Goranov said he would immediately begin talks with the Eurogroup to establish a plan for joining ERM II. In July 2015, the Bulgarian government established a coordination council to prepare the country for eurozone membership. The coordination council was to draft a plan for the introduction of the euro, propose a target date, and organise the preparation and coordination of the expert working groups. This approach was supported by former Bulgarian National Bank governor Kolyo Paramov, who had been in office when the state currency board was established. Paramov argued that adoption would "trigger a number of positive economic effects":
  • Sufficient money supply
  • Getting rid of the currency board that prevents the national bank from functioning as a lender of last resort to rescue banks in financial trouble
  • Private and public lending benefiting from lower interest rates
Former Bulgarian National Bank deputy governor Emil Harsev agreed with Paramov, stating that it was possible to adopt the euro in 2018 and that "Bulgaria's membership in the eurozone will bring only positive effect on the economy" because "since the currency board in 1997, we have been accepting all the negative effects of accession into the eurozone without getting the positive ones ".

From 2017

When Borisov's government was re-elected in 2017, he declared his intention to apply to join ERM II, but Goranov elaborated that the government would only seek to join once the eurozone states were ready to approve the application, and that he expected to have clarity on the matter by the end of 2017. On taking the presidency of the EU Council in January 2018, Borisov indicated that no clarification had been given, but announced that he was going to pursue applications for both ERM II and Schengen by July 2018 regardless. Bulgaria sent a letter to the Eurogroup in July 2018 expressing its desire to join ERM II and committing to enter into a "close cooperation" agreement with the European banking union. In January 2019, Goranov said he hoped that Bulgaria could join the ERM II mechanism in July and introduce the euro on 1 January 2022. However, the first deadline was deferred to July 2019 due to extra conditions requested by eurozone governments, namely that Bulgaria:
While the CVM reforms were mentioned, and progress in judicial reform and organised crime was expected, leaving the CVM was not a precondition. As of October 2019, Goranov's target was to enter the ERM II by April 2020. In January 2020, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that it was possible for Bulgaria to join ERM II later in 2020 and adopt the euro in 2023. Borisov stated in February 2020 that Bulgaria's application would be reviewed in July. In March, the Bulgarian central bank said that this target was no longer realistic due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, in April Borisov stated that he would push forward the application by the end of April. The reason he gave for this U-turn was the 500 billion euros rescue package to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, which the finance ministers of the Eurogroup had agreed upon on 10 April. On 24 April, Fitch Ratings announced that they would probably upgrade Bulgaria's foreign currency issuer default ratings between Bulgaria's accession to ERM II and euro adoption:
Given that the COVID-19 pandemic response is taking up significant resources with regard to political engagement at the EU-wide level, facilitating the Bulgarian lev's ERM2 accession may decline as a relative priority for European institutions. If concerns about risks ease and the process resumes, this would be supportive of the rating, as underlined by our view that all things being equal, we would upgrade Bulgaria's Long-Term Foreign-Currency IDR by two notches between admission to the ERM II and joining the euro.

On 30 April 2020, Bulgaria officially submitted documents to the European Central Bank to apply to join ERM II, the first step to introducing the euro. On 12 May, European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis stated that Bulgaria could join ERM II together with Croatia in July, which both countries did on 10 July. By the ECB decision adopted on 24 June 2020, Bulgaria and its national bank became a member of the European banking union under a close cooperation agreement which entered into force on 1 October 2020.