European Commission proposes separate euro zone budget

Some experts have warned that a separate budget would undermine European integration and that EU countries which, like Poland, are outside the euro zone would receive less funds from Brussels.

Earlier this month, Polish MEPs from two parties voiced opposition to moves to propose a separate budget for the 19 countries which share the euro as their currency.

This is not the first time suggestions of a separate eurozone budget have been put forward, but each time the plans were protested by non-euro countries including Poland, which feared decreased financial support from the EU, the Polish IAR news agency has previously reported.

Poland’s central bank chief Adam Glapiński wrote in Tuesday’s edition of The Financial Times that Warsaw, which joined the EU in 2004, “has signalled that in the next 10 years it has no interest in joining” the eurozone.

According to Glapiński, "Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU in the 2000s initially saw euro membership as a badge of honour,” but “then the sovereign debt crisis destroyed any belief that the euro area is a New Jerusalem."

(pk)

Source: PAP/IAR