After Eurostat data: Bulgaria on the verge of meeting the inflation criterion for joining the Eurozone

Bulgaria remains on the verge of meeting the inflation criterion, as revealed by Eurostat's data on the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices in the EU.

The three countries with the lowest inflation are Lithuania, Finland and Italy.

Bulgaria’s average annual inflation is 2.61%. The requirement is that our average annual inflation should be no more than 1.5% above the inflation in the three countries with the lowest price increases. Current calculations show that we are just 0.14 percentage points away.

The government is expected to submit a request for an extraordinary convergence report to the European Commission and the ECB within two weeks.

Technically, the country does not yet meet the benchmark, but it is too early to confirm this definitively. Traditionally, the European Commission excludes countries with unusually low inflation from its calculations. Therefore, it is uncertain whether Lithuania, with its reported 0.9% inflation, will remain among the three selected countries.