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Comment by bufferoverflow | Hacker News Reader

> Estonia’s only currency is the euro and this is an essential feature of our EU membership

That's just false. Eurozone and the EU overlap, but they aren't the same. UK has its pound, Switzerland uses francs.

New countries joining the EU are obliged to adopt the euro once they meet the economic requirements. Only some of the pre-euro members have negotiated an opt-out.

Also note that the article doesn’t claim the euro as essential feature for every country’s EU membership, it just says it’s essential for Estonia.

That's an irrelevant technicality. In practice, the countries can postpone the adoption of euro indefinitely, simply by refusing to provide evidence for meeting the economic requirements.

This is the strategy of Sweden, for instance, to retain the crown. If Sweden were to meet the criteria it would have to adopt the euro, but it never needs to show that it does meet the criteria, so it can keep its own monetary policy.

(I live in Finland, and while I think euro is personally convenient for me, it has been very bad for my country's economy).

Good point. UK & Denmark both have formal de jure opt outs, negotiated on launch of the EUR project. Sweden is a de facto opt out. By not entering the ERM trial period and managing SEK into a band with EUR, SE never enters the Eurozone.

The mismanagement of Nokia has been a much bigger problem for Finland's economy than the Euro ever was.

Hardly. Even if it is big, it is just one company. A country's economic policy cannot be based on expecting perfect performance from one company. Saying it is more significant than abandoning the possibility of own monetary policy sounds like full-scale whataboutism.

It's not false as it says our EU membership, as opposed to every EU membership.

You're right, but Switzerland is not a member of EU.

Yep, previous poster should have said Sweden and Denmark as they use their own currencies. And on the other hand, Kosovo and Montenegro use the euro as currency even though they are not in EU.

>You're right, but Switzerland is not a member of EU.

... and UK soon won't be anymore.

Denmark is a better example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_eurozone

And there is of course the "curious" situation of Sweden:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_and_the_euro

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