SOFIA, March 20 (MENA) - The significance of membership in the euro area for Bulgaria was the focus of the meeting of Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov with President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde and President of the Eurogroup Paschal Donohue, the Bulgarian government’s press service said Thursday.

The three met in Brussels, where a session of the European Council was taking place, the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) reported.

Zhelyazkov introduced Lagarde and Donohue to the budget procedure currently underway in Bulgaria’s National Assembly. He also stressed the compliance of the draft State budget for 2025 with the medium-term fiscal-structural plan.

“Bulgaria submitted a request for an extraordinary convergence report in February this year, when it met the Maastricht criteria for eurozone membership. I hope that the efforts of Bulgarian society in the last decades to maintain fiscal discipline and balanced budgets will produce the expected result,” Zhelyazkov said after the meeting.

Earlier in the day, Bulgarian National Bank Governor Dimitar Radev said Bulgaria is currently one of few in the EU that unconditionally meet all nominal convergence criteria, including the price stability criterion.

On Wednesday, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) President Odile Renaud-Basso told BTA that Bulgaria is making good progress toward joining the Eurozone, as inflation is declining toward the threshold set by relevant criteria. (MENA)

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