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In 2004 the European Union will be enlarged to include ten new Member States, eight of them from the former Soviet bloc. These countries have made outstanding progress in terms of macroeconomic development in recent years, but there remain a number of specific problems which raise doubts as to the future monetary integration of these countries. Hungary is a case in point that illustrates both the achievements and the difficulties of the transition process. In July 2003 the Hungarian government and the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) announced in a joint declaration that Hungary would introduce the euro as national currency on 1 January 2008. The political elite, the policy-makers and the wider public take for granted the benefits of replacing the forint with the euro, while repeated turbulence on the financial markets highlights the fragility of convergence and currency reform. This article discusses various aspects of this unusual period of monetary history.
