20 years of disputes over the eurozone in Poland

The longer Poland remains in the European Union, the less often the topic of adopting the euro comes up. Instead of a real economic debate, the common currency is increasingly becoming a political tool – a scare tactic or a convenient slogan reduced to the formula: “we will enter the euro when it is beneficial for the economy.”

Poland formally agreed to adopt the euro when it joined the European Union in 2004. Poles therefore have already spoken on this matter once, saying “yes” to the European Union in the accession referendum held on 7–8 June 2003.

However, Poland could not adopt the common currency immediately after joining the European Union, even if there had been such political will, because it did not meet the so‑called convergence criteria set out in the Maastricht Treaty. These include, among other things, the requirement that the inflation rate in the year preceding the assessment must not exceed by more than 1.5 percentage points the inflation of the three EU member states with the lowest inflation, that the public finance deficit must not be higher than 3 percent of GDP, that public debt must not exceed 60 percent of GDP, and that the long‑term interest rate must not be higher by more than 2 percentage points than interest rates in several EU member states.

Moreover, even if these criteria were met, Poland would have to participate for at least two years before adopting the euro in the so‑called ERM II mechanism. This is an exchange rate mechanism that tests the stability of the national currency against the euro within an allowable fluctuation band of plus or minus 15 percent.

At present, Poland still does not meet any of the conditions for joining the euro area, although in some cases the European Commission may waive the requirement to meet all the criteria. For example, at the time of joining the euro area, Croatia did not meet the criterion concerning the level of public debt, but the European Commission decided that the path of its reduction adopted by the Croatian government would lead to lowering public debt below 60 percent of GDP.

The president of the National Bank of Poland Adam Glapiński has long been an opponent of Poland’s rapid accession to the euro area. In June 2025, he presented his views on this subject in the scientific journal “Bank i Kredyt” published by the National Bank of Poland. “Analyzing the theoretical literature on optimal currency areas, as well as the functioning of the euro area to date, it should be clearly stated that the adoption of the euro by Poland would currently create significant risks for maintaining economic balance and for the further process of convergence of the Polish economy,” wrote Glapiński.

He assessed that these risks would have two main sources. The first would be the loss of the ability to adjust interest rates to the needs of the domestic economy after entering the euro area. The second source of risk resulting from adopting the common currency would be the loss of the benefits of a floating zloty exchange rate. “In the coming decades, as the wealth of the Polish economy grows and it converges towards the wealthiest economies of Western Europe, the assessment of the balance of economic benefits and costs of adopting the euro may change. Nevertheless, at present this balance is clearly negative,” wrote the president of the National Bank of Poland.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Finance Minister Andrzej Domański have both declared in recent months that there are no plans for Poland to adopt the euro.

Earlier, however, the views of the Polish political class on entering the euro area had changed. This topic has also strongly divided politicians and experts for almost the entire period of Poland’s membership in the European Union.

Half a year after joining the European Union, in November 2004, the then finance minister in Marek Belka’s government, Mirosław Gronicki, emphasized that Poland would not officially announce planned dates for switching to the euro. He stressed, however, that adopting the euro was in Poland’s strategic interest and would make it possible to exert greater influence on decisions taken within the European Union. The Belka government did not set a strict date for when Poland would replace the zloty with the euro, but the finance minister had previously said that it could be 2009.

Already in February 2005, the European Commission concluded that Poland would probably not meet the EU criteria by 2007 that would allow it to join the euro area in 2009.

On the day of his victory in the presidential election in October 2005, Lech Kaczyński announced the possibility of holding a referendum in 2010 on Poland’s accession to the euro area.

In November 2005, the new prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, representing the victorious Law and Justice party (PiS), said that in the next term of the Sejm there was no need for Poland to enter the euro area.

The convergence program prepared by the government of Marek Belka assumed that Poland would meet the fiscal criteria in 2007 (among other things, the budget deficit would not be higher than 3 percent of GDP, public debt not greater than 60 percent of GDP), and that it would enter the euro area in 2009. At the beginning of January 2006, the Ministry of Finance prepared a new version of the convergence program, but it did not present a date for meeting the Maastricht criteria that would allow Poland to join the euro area.

At the end of January 2006, the new deputy prime minister and finance minister in the government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Zyta Gilowska, announced that Poland would not enter the ERM II mechanism in 2007 and that it was very doubtful that it would meet the requirements necessary to join the euro area in 2009. “Without the euro area we are defenseless against exchange rate fluctuations and intensive actions of speculative capital. We must do everything to prepare Poland to join the euro area. (…) I believe that talking about a date of accession is like casting a spell on the euro. However, the assumption that we will be ready in 2009 is doubtful,” admitted Gilowska.

The then president of the National Bank of Poland Leszek Balcerowicz spoke out against a referendum on the euro. “I am afraid that announcing a referendum on an issue that has already been decided by society in a referendum does not inspire confidence. It is unnecessary and causes at least astonishment among our partners in the European Union,” he said in December 2006. Balcerowicz also argued at the time that adopting the euro increases economic growth by 0.2–0.4 percent.

The possible date of entry kept being pushed back. In April 2007, Gilowska said that Poland would be ready to enter the euro area in 2012. The year 2012 as the earliest date for entering the euro area was also given in June 2007 by the then president of the National Bank of Poland Sławomir Skrzypek.

In September 2007, during the Economic Forum in Krynica, Gilowska announced that in 2009 Poland would declare its readiness to enter the euro area, because then “we will meet the convergence parameters, including the parameter of the public finance sector deficit.” She added that joining the euro was “absolutely necessary.”

As part of the then ongoing campaign, this topic rarely appeared. The leader of Civic Platform (PO) Donald Tusk said that Poland should adopt the euro as quickly as possible. At that time he believed that this could happen in 2013. After PO’s election victory, Tusk, as the new prime minister, slightly modified his position. In his policy speech he said that it was in Poland’s interest to prepare as quickly as possible to enter the euro area. “We must properly prepare for this change so that the process of switching to the common currency is safe for the economy and as beneficial as possible for ordinary people,” he said. At the same time, he stressed that the government would not adhere to any doctrine regarding the introduction of the euro.

However, in September 2008, during the Economic Forum in Krynica, he stated that the government would strive for Poland to enter the euro area in 2011. “I want to formulate precisely one of the main goals of our actions, namely Poland’s accession to the euro area. Today we can responsibly say that our goal is the year 2011. This is a difficult task, but we assess that it is possible,” he said in a widely discussed speech.

The Ministry of Finance claimed at the time that Poland already met most of the criteria necessary to join the euro area.

A special meeting of the Cabinet Council in October 2008 was devoted to the issue of entering the euro area. President Lech Kaczyński said afterwards that the introduction of the euro in Poland should be “a matter of some discussion.” At the same time, he considered it important that there be a perspective of introducing the European currency in our country, because this – as he added – stabilizes the situation and is an important signal for Poland’s partners.

Shortly afterwards, at the end of October 2008, the president maintained his position that there should first be a referendum on the date of introducing the euro in Poland, and only then should possible changes to the constitution take place.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk emphasized in early November 2008 that, looking at the country’s future, adopting the euro was “unquestionably in Poland’s interest.” “This is not an easy matter, I too am attached to our national currency,” he admitted.

He also said that the government’s most ambitious plan related to adopting the euro assumed that around May and June 2009 Poland would join the ERM2 stabilization mechanism. Under this scenario, a political agreement on amending the constitution was to be reached by the end of 2008, and work on the amendment would continue in the winter. In November 2008, after a meeting with the Monetary Policy Council, Tusk argued that the chances of entering the euro area in 2012 were 100 percent realistic.

However, the economic crisis then spread, affecting the euro area as well. Several times its collapse was even threatened due to Greece’s financial problems. This also changed the perspective of Polish politicians.

As late as June, during the presidential campaign, the future president Bronisław Komorowski said that Poland should enter the euro area in 2015 or 2016. His rival Jarosław Kaczyński, on the other hand, argued that this could only happen when “Polish wallets are completely safe.”

In December 2010, Komorowski, as president, presented to the Sejm his own draft amendments to the constitution, which included regulations to take effect after Poland’s entry into the euro area. They concerned, among other things, the organization of the National Bank of Poland, including the abolition of the Monetary Policy Council. “Poland should have a passport to travel towards the euro area, but that does not mean that we have to set off on the road already,” the president explained.

Although in the course of further work Komorowski withdrew from some provisions, the Sejm still did not adopt the changes to the constitution by the end of the 6th term, that is, by November 2011, even though the president’s intention was to pass them before or during Poland’s first presidency of the European Union, which took place in the second half of 2011.

In January 2014, Tusk said that Poland’s entry into the euro area would not be safe for Polish citizens. He admitted that he was an advocate of Poland’s accession to the euro area, but “certainly not in the near future, but in the perspective that our imagination can reach.”

In March 2014, the president of the National Bank of Poland Marek Belka argued that it was easier to defend one’s interests in the euro area. At the same time, he pointed out that 10 years earlier Polish economists had mostly spoken enthusiastically about the euro, but that this had changed. “The risks associated with the euro seem more pronounced, and the benefits seem less obvious. So the balance of benefits and risks has changed,” said Belka.

On 4 June 2014, President Bronisław Komorowski said in a speech before the National Assembly that Poland was facing the necessity of developing a new strategy for European integration. As he explained, this concerned, among other things, resolving the dilemma of whether we actually strive to adopt the common euro currency. The president stressed that this discussion should take place after the elections planned for 2015.

After the elections, however, the situation changed in that Law and Justice came to power – a party distanced from the prospect of rapidly adopting the euro. One of the first decisions of the government of Beata Szydło, taken still in 2015, was to abolish the plenipotentiary for integration with the euro area operating within the structure of the Ministry of Finance.

In May 2017, the then deputy prime minister, minister of development and finance Mateusz Morawiecki said that “it is not in Poland’s interest at this moment to be in the euro area,” because “we do not want to lose the ability to conduct an independent monetary policy.” He argued that “Poland and the euro area are not today mutually coherent currency areas”; Poland has “a different course of the business cycle,” “a different production structure,” and also “different types of competitive advantages.”

President Andrzej Duda, for his part, allowed that the question of the euro could be one of the questions in the referendum on the constitution that he planned to organize on the occasion of 11 November 2018. However, this referendum did not take place.

The topic returned in 2019, another election year. In April of that year, during a PiS convention in Lublin as part of the campaign for the European Parliament elections, PiS president Jarosław Kaczyński said that we would adopt the euro when it was in our interest and when we reached a level close to that of Germany. During the same convention, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki argued that Poland did not fall into a deep crisis in 2008 because the PiS government in 2007 had cut taxes and the Polish zloty had been maintained.

In August 2022, the president of the National Bank of Poland Adam Glapiński warned that if the then opposition won the elections, Poland would in a sense be forced to adopt the euro. “For about a year now it has been said that the task assigned by Brussels to Tusk is not only to overthrow the existing government in Poland and put our country on course towards the euro area. After completing these tasks, Tusk is to return to Brussels, become president of the European Commission and implement the accelerated construction of a European state. Only the candidacies of Tusk and Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, are being considered as representatives of Central Europe,” Glapiński said in an interview with “Gazeta Polska.”

In November 2022, the topic of Poland’s possible adoption of the euro was raised again by PiS president Jarosław Kaczyński during a meeting with PiS activists in Kędzierzyn‑Koźle. He stressed that adopting the euro “is a kind of move that we cannot make at this moment.” He pointed out that in its agreements with the European Union, Poland has no specified date for entering the euro area. “So we can enter in 50 years,” he declared. “Even if this were to be considered in some nearer period, then only if (…) the Polish economy strengthens to such an extent that global markets begin to value our currency much higher, because the strength of a currency is to some extent the result of the strength of the economy,” he explained.

In the PiS president’s view, “if Poland were to have per capita GDP at the level of that of Germany (…) then this switch to the euro could be profitable for our economy.” “Simply (the euro – PAP) is a currency for a very strong economy. We do not have such an economy at the moment – although we are moving forward quickly – and therefore under no circumstances can we make such a decision, and I repeat: Germany sets this as a sine qua non condition for implementing their plans, and there is not the slightest doubt that Tusk and his camarilla are ready for this,” he stated.

In January 2023, after Croatia’s entry into the euro area, PiS made this issue part of its political campaign. “The inflationary chaos that is so acutely felt by Croats, who are signaling this in various ways, is a very serious warning for us,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a press conference. “Choosing the euro at a time when we have such high inflation is a bit like pouring oil on the fire; we warn everyone who wants to force Poles to enter the euro area against this,” he added.

PiS spokesperson Rafał Bochenek added that this might be “a German idea” for Donald Tusk in Poland, so that “he would smoothly introduce a euro‑team here for us, because that is what it boils down to.”

This thread also appeared after the change of government, when in March 2024 a group of MPs from the ruling coalition submitted an initial motion to bring the president of the National Bank of Poland Adam Glapiński before the State Tribunal in connection with the alleged violation of the constitution. “This is the repayment of a debt that Donald Tusk incurred in the election campaign from the Germans, because the euro area is beneficial for Germany; for the other countries it is very disadvantageous. The point is to remove – probably by forceful people, as is customary for the ‘13 December coalition’ – the president of the National Bank of Poland in order to open the way to push Poland into the euro area,” commented the head of the PiS parliamentary club Mariusz Błaszczak.

In June 2024, as part of the campaign before the next European Parliament elections, the topic of entering the euro area was exploited mainly by Confederation. Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Krzysztof Bosak stressed that Poland is under no obligation to enter the euro area, because the provision on this matter is open‑ended. “Our proposal is never to enter it, because it is not in our interest to submit to an external authority in matters of monetary policy and regulation of the financial sector,” he declared.

In his annual Sejm address on the goals of Polish foreign policy in April 2025, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski did not mention the prospects of Poland’s entry into the euro area. This topic also did not appear during Poland’s presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2025.

Also in the presidential campaign, little was said about the adoption of the euro in Poland. During a debate of all candidates organized by “Super Express” on 28 April 2025, Krzysztof Stanowski asked the Speaker of the Sejm and Third Way candidate Szymon Hołownia about the evolution of his views on adopting the euro in Poland. According to Stanowski, Hołownia had been in favor until recently, but changed his mind during the election campaign. The Speaker of the Sejm stressed that adopting the euro is not a dogma, but a commitment that we undertook when joining the European Union. He emphasized that this currency should be adopted only when the right conditions are in place. As he added, these conditions have changed since his earlier statements. “The euro should be put on hold until the moment when our economy and competitive environment allow us to think about it. Right now they do not, and that’s the end of the story,” declared Hołownia.

President Karol Nawrocki, in an address delivered before the National Assembly after his swearing‑in on 6 August 2025, stated that his program envisages saying “no” to illegal migration and the euro currency and “yes” to the Polish zloty. (2.01.2026)