“We have not set a time limit because it is very important both for Romania and the rest of the euro area that accession to this area is made when the state is ready, when the business environment is ready for such an accession, because we are not talking about nominal criteria, but on a number of actual criteria. The living standard, for example. In the 10 years of EU membership, the standard of living has increased, Romania has recovered to a great extent, but not completely, the gap against the European average. For example, it is now at 60% of EU’s average GDP, ten years ago it was 38%, and here we do not necessarily have an indicator to say to what extent should this indicator be, what level should reach to consider the accession safe but, if we look at the recent accessions to the eurozone, it was somewhere between 67-70-75% of the European average. And that’s just one of the criteria we look at,” Angela Filote said, according to TransylvaniaToday.ro.
