How Has the Financial Crisis Affected the Eurozone Accession Outlook in Central and Eastern Europe?

This paper analyses how the financial crisis has affected task of meeting the Maastricht Criteria for the eight Central and Eastern European Countries which have yet to join the euro. It identifies the channels by which the crisis has fed through to deficits, debt, interest rates and inflation and seeks to provide numerical estimates of these factors. Deficits have worsened, but for most countries the problem is still primarily structural rather than cyclical. Debts have risen, but only in the cases of Latvia and Poland has the crisis changed the outlook for meeting the criterion. Inflation has fallen, particularly in the Baltic states on account of large output gap declines. The depth of the recession is likely to depress inflation rates for several years. Lastly, the interest rate criterion is more challenging because of the rise in spreads since the crisis