Support for euro adoption wanes in Poland, study shows

22 comments

1. # Support for introducing the euro in Poland has decreased since last year, with a particularly sharp decline among women, a recent survey has shown.

   When countries join the EU, they commit to eventually adopting the euro by meeting specific economic criteria. This obligation is part of the EU treaties, though the timing varies based on when each country fulfills the necessary conditions. Some, like Denmark, have opt-outs allowing them to keep their national currency.

   Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden are the only EU countries that have not adopted the euro currency yet.

   Support for the introduction of the euro in Poland “in the coming years” has decreased, with approval dropping from 34.9% in 2023 to 30.7%, a poll conducted by SW Research on behalf of the Economic Freedom Foundation.

   Currently only 28.5% of women favor adopting the euro “in the coming years,” a notable decrease from 33.9% in 2023.

   Among men, support has dropped from 36% to 34.1%. This decline comes amid a broader rise in opposition to the euro, which has grown from 50.8% to 56.5%.

   # Political affiliation is a determining factor

   The data reveals that political divides are the primary driver of attitudes toward the euro, outweighing factors like age, education, or location.

   Voters of the Civic Coalition, the main party of the ruling coalition, show the highest support at 57%, although this figure has dropped by 10.6 percentage points since last year.

   Conversely, voters from the Law and Justice party (PiS), the leading opposition party, and the far-right Confederation party overwhelmingly reject the euro, with nearly 80% of PiS voters opposing even the preparation for its adoption.

   However, an issue of whether Poland should start preparing to adopt the euro garnered more support, with nearly 40% of those polled responded in favor.

   Source: Polska Agencja Prasowa

2. And very well.

3. I can understand them. This would be a big change that might increase prices like we have seen in croatia recently

4. Probably a smart decision. Poland is a big enough country to have its own currency and monetary policy

5. The problem isn’t the Euro currency , the problem is the country corruption that will sank any currency you will choose 🤷‍♂️

6. The problem with Euro is that you can’t devalue your currency when needed, since you don’t have it anymore.

7. Good for them. Croatian prices skyrocketed after we adopted euro.

8. Current situation bias. No-one ever wants to change, but what matters here is that no-one with the euro wants to go back, which shows that it is a successful policy. This is a clear case of a thing where politicians are doing their country a disservice if they govern by the opinion polls.

9. Good. Poland should have its own currency, not be slapped around by Brussels. Bad enough that Poland spent 150+ years under Russian, German, Austrian boots. Never again!

   (Also, Polish women are smart … when they speak, listen. Remember who the first woman to win a Nobel was. Also, also, TVP may be a biased source since it was controlled by PiS for quite a while.)

10. This is very interesting. I am personally very much an EU enthusiast, but I am myself having serious doubts about introducing euro in Poland. I have friends across Europe, most of whom suffered after their countries adopted euro (Croatia most recently).

11. Well, things are going well so people think it’s thanks to them, and the Euro would just drag them down. When we get in trouble (and we will), we will cry that we didn’t have a more stable situation

12. If adopting the Euro means getting rid of Glapinski and preventing future party hacks from taking up the NBP chair, I’m all for it.

13. Has there ever been a country where the population broadly supported the adoption of the Euro? It wasn’t exactly popular in Germany as well back in the day. [Here](https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/umfrage-zum-euro-mehrheit-will-die-d-mark-zurueck-a-196835.html) is an article from 2002, a few months after the introduction of the Euro.

    > As reported by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”, a majority of 54 percent would like to see the D-Mark back. Only 37 percent of respondents did not agree with this statement. 9 percent declared themselves “undecided” […]

    > In the monthly Euro survey conducted by the Inra-Institut Mölln for the “Financial Times Deutschland”, 38% said they opposed the introduction of the euro. 36 percent welcomed the euro and 26 percent were undecided. The ratio of supporters to opponents has thus returned to a level similar to that immediately before the introduction of the euro, when it was 38 to 39 percent.

    But over time people warmed up to the Euro and nowadays an Euro exit is an extremely fringe position.

14. Croat here.

    When we adopted Euro, prices literally changed over night and local businesses and supermarket chains rounded prices up to 2.00€. They said it’s inflation, but in reality, inflation was the same on 31.12.2022. and 1.1.2023. Inflation comes at monthly basis, not overnight and especially not on the all products at the same time. Then when we busted that myth, they claimed the reason why prices were way higher than in neighboring countries, “we have indented coastline” which drives prices nuts. Funnily enough, for the whole of 2022, our government promised prices wouldn’t rise, that there are mechanisms which will prevent that. They even paid ads on TV, radio, newspapers, not to mention we got leaflets in our mail and handed in city squares about Euro. What they didn’t do is make a law or something and prevent local businesses and big chains from robbing us. Literally nothing. And when we complained about that, our national bank governor literally said “if it’s expensive for you, go to the supermarket where stuff are cheaper”.

    So we had the case of high inflation + business greed while our salaries stayed pretty much the same. Then we did the next best thing we could, go to the Slovenia and Hungary for cheap shopping. And when I say cheap, I say up to 50-60% cheap, especially in Hungary. People filled their cars with groceries abroad and went on monthly shopping out of the country. Now, not everyone got that chance so some people literally bought less stuff than they did before. Simply inflation and greed ate our entire salaries. I’m still impressed how we all managed to survive that.

    When government started to realize “oh shit, people really can’t live like this anymore”, they started limit prices of certain basic groceries in supermarkets and started a website on which people can compare prices. They threatened all supermarket chains they’ll send inspection to check the “illegal” price maneuvering and required from them to provide them entire list of all stuff they have with their current prices. Of course very few supermarkets did that, rest complained they don’t have that data in form government requires. So government sent inspectors that found a gazillion violations and they did, you guessed it, nothing. Yup, not even a fine, just basic unlimited warnings and that’s it.

    We fastened out belts for four months, then salaries started raising. This made our lives a bit more easier, we could now afford stuff like before. But man, prices kept rising and rising, so government decided it will remove surtax and got us all a raise once again! Staggering 5€, depending the city you live in, you might as well got 2€. Cities than were left without any revenue, so they had to increase tax to the max so they wouldn’t have make utilities more expensive. In 2024 salaries rose again and now we’re somewhat ok. We still can’t afford vacation at our sea though.

    In the end, I’m glad we got Euro. Every year I’m somewhere in Europe, let’s say, it was a blessing being in Slovenia, Italy and Austria and paying using our currency without the need to exchange it.

15. We don’t want nor need euro. It would destroy economic situation here. Prices would rise a lot, reaching hights we never knew before while wages would probably stay the same. IMHO we should never implement euro, that would give germans or France too much power over us and make us rely on their decisions that in hard times will profit just them. Also switch from PLN to euro would probably destroy personal savings of people

16. Losing control of your own currency is not a small matter, it’s not for no reason that many countries want to keep their own, like Sweden

17. The Eurozone doesn’t make sense as long as there’s no single central defense policy & military industrial complex. The EU first has to be able to provide ironclad security guarantees before a member would consider giving up their most important asset, which is a sovereign currency.

18. Why going for something inferior when you have a sexy zloty just around the corner.

19. Then stop studying this

20. They agreed to take the Euro when they joined the EU, so they should. Poland can’t just keep leeching on everything the EU benefits them without adopting the things they agreed on which doesn’t benefit it now.

21. I am torn on this. On one hand I don’t think the EU economies are interconnected enough to make common currency a good idea. We will still have local recessions and then having your own currency and central bank is a very useful tool to alleviate those. On the other hand our government is so incompetent that maybe removing their power to print money and buy their own bonds or other financial shenanigans is a good idea.

    One way or another I can’t imagine the idea getting enough support here. It’s a suicide for any political party to support Euro in Poland and it will be for at least a decade from now.

22. Good 👍