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Comment by aorth | Hacker News Reader

I happened to be in downtown Sofia last night by chance and saw the massive protest.

https://apnews.com/article/bulgaria-euro-protest-nationalist...

There were even Russians at some of the anti Euro protests. Probably proped up by the Kremlin through Tiktok and Telegram.

Bulgaria has a pegged currency to the Euro since forever, they got quite depopulated after 1991 and their only chance is to become a tourist destination and to attract some investments from Türkye and maybe Greece, because nobody else would invest. The fact that Romania isn't interested in builing more bridges over the Danube and that Serbia isn't part of the EU also puts the northern part of Bulgaria in a tight spot. If you want to see what a depopulated country looks like, travel through northern Bulgaria. It looks like the descriptions from the book The World Without Us.

I don't know if it's their intention but as soon as the article mentions that the protest leader is pro-Russian, I immediately assume anything he stands for is wrong and therefore euro adoption must be good. Of course someone pro-Russian is trying to push countries away from integrating with the West, and I have to assume any arguments he's making are probably disingenuous and misleading.

And you’re right in this case!

If opposition to the Euro is so massive, can't they simply hold a referendum over it?

It’s not, it’s a couple hundred people and it’s mostly old folks that are 60+, as they’re easy to be riled up due to them longing for russian occupation.

Also a referendum on the topic was ruled illegal, because it’ll violate the EU accession, where EU adoption is mandatory when criteria are met.

Also it’s too late now, it all depends on two votes on the 8th of July by the ministers of finance and the EU parliament. Bulgaria has no way of pulling out now, without doing massive damage to their EU integration, credit score and investors’ interest.

It is legal to do referendum about entering EU, but illegal to do referendum about leaving EU? It sounds quite totalitarian.

It’s legal to do a referendum about leaving the EU, but no one wants that and it’d be a political suicide to suggest it.

Alt right politicians mostly want a referendum against the euro specifically, so that they can get points when the main parties can’t deliver it, they don’t want to exit the EU.

So called "alt right" and similar labelling is common for those who are scared of these ideas and not willing to listen true reasons.

We have demonstrations about every month for calls to reform EU structures or leave EU in current bureaucratic form.

The Bulgarian currency has been pegged to the Deutsche Mark for more than twenty years now. This means that we’ve pretty much been using the euro since its inception, and any opposition is just a populist manoeuvring

While it's true that a pegged currency is like using the euro with respect to current purchasing power, that definitely isn't all that matters and it isn't the most important consideration either.

Here is something more important - having your own currency and its associated banking infrastructure serves as an insurance against applying financial pressure to the country, such as stuffing non-repayable loans down the country's throat and then gorging on indefinite loan extensions with high interest rates and amounts - a strategy used so many times but mentioned so very rarely.

Case in point - Greece, that happened to them right after they went all in on the euro and killed their drachma.

It might be that Bulgaria has been tied up to the conveyor belt already and there is no way out of the slaughter house, I don't know the case enough to judge, but in principle, the EU would work much better as a customs union, politicizing it has proven to be a dirty affair.

Putin Putin aside for now, he's irrelevant anyway.

Did Greece spend the down-the-throat-loans down the drain or invested into infrastructure projects as intended?

The loans weren't given for investments. Besides, if the Greeks had the drachma they wouldn't be given these loans in the first place.

But you started a very interesting topic - who is more at fault in the case of under-performing loans - the lender, the borrower, or is it 50-50?

Greek's borrowing binge was a drug shot in the arm, when they woke up, they found their shipbuilding industry gone... to the new EU members like Poland who sold cheaper and without tariffs within the EU. The Euro made Greek's recovery impossible.

Unintended consequences or something else? Another interesting topic that applies to many cases besides Greece.

Adoption of the Euro currency is mandatory for European Union member states. Only a few states have negotiated an exception (Denmark, previously UK?) and others like Sweden apparently keep delaying somehow. Bulgaria doesn't have much leverage I don't think...

Problem is, that terms for adopt Euro as currency was differnet when becoming a memeber state back then.

Now we have strong push of digital euro with centralised regulations which is something that I would never agree with (privacy and economic concerns) and so I'm agianst adopting Euro in my country.

The Bulgarian parliament refused to organize a referendum despite the civil petition for such.

Somehow it was possible to do referendum about entering EU membership, but there was none referendum about leaving EU except GB. There would be probably few states where majority would like to leave EU.

[Eventually] joining the Euro is part of the rules to join the EU. One could say they've already voted for this.

As a victim of Brexit, I'd love to undo that particular referendum, but I also understand the instability retrying big decisions would cause. Hungary joining the Euro has been on their cards since 2007.

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