‘Joining euro improved quality of institutions’

Bloomberg

Mario Draghi said joining the euro has improved the quality of institutions in eastern European members, as opposed to “more mixed” results in countries that have kept their own currencies.
The ECB President, hosting a conference on central and eastern Europe in Frankfurt, said the main challenge in region is achieving more balanced gro-wth. That “will only be possible if domestic institutions and governance are improved.”
“Those countries that joined the euro area have continued improving their institutional quality, partly owing to accession process. In other EU countries of region, efforts to imp- rove institutional quality have been more mixed in recent years.” Enthusiasm for joining the 19-nation euro area has waned in the region, with
some ex-communist countries including Poland and Hungary taking a more populist turn in recent years. This has fuelled concern they may be backsliding on democratic norms some three decades after ditching communism.