Slovenia will change over to the common European currency as planned on 1 January 2007, with or without anybody else, Finance Minister Andrej Bajuk said at the fringes of a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.
"I would be pleased if Estonia and Lithuania make it as well, however, our changeover does not depend on anybody," Bajuk stressed.
Bajuk's optimism was fuelled by his Austrian counterpart Karl Heinz Grasser, who said that out of the three common-currency hopefuls only Slovenia has "good prospects".
According to the Slovenian central bank, Slovenia, which met all Maastricht convergence criteria at the end of 2005, is not likely to have any major difficulties in the run-up to the euro changeover because it can rely on a stable domestic economy.
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