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14 Dec, 2010 17:28

Slovakia needs ‘Plan B’ if Euro rejected

Slovakia needs ‘Plan B’ if Euro rejected

Slovakia, the most-recent country to convert to the Euro, is rethinking whether it should stick to the currency.

Parliamentary speaker Richard Siluk says Slovakia needs a 'Plan B' in case it has to switch back to its old currency.He added that Slovakia needs to shore up its financial defenses if the European debt crisis worsens. His words come amid a string of rallies across the continent against sweeping austerity measures and welfare cuts. Patience is wearing thin among people in the Eurozone – with many refusing to pay for politicians' mistakes, and calling for the single currency to go.Juraj Karpis, analyst at the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in Slovakia, does not believe any of the Slovak leaders actually want to leave the Eurozone in the coming years.“I see it only as a start of the discussion on what to do if all the things go wrong with the euro, and I think it’s rational to have a plan,” he told RT. The euro was not a savior for Slovakia in the first place, and it is important to understand how the Slovaks actually feel about it, claims Karpis.“The Eurozone changed dramatically during the last year, and in Slovakia many painful structural reforms happened in the past years. We had to save our own banks in 2001, and it cost us almost ten per cent of the GDP," he said. "Now the Slovak people don’t really understand why they should send money to Irish banks when we had to foot the bill for our own banks by ourselves.”The feeling of European solidarity is also not that widespread in Slovakia, and the Slovaks do not see why they should help their wealthier brothers, said Karpis.

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