Should Czechia adopt Euro?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. Feel free to add new arguments, rewrite long or confusing arguments, and remove irrelevant or low-effort arguments. That's the unique wiki aspect of wikidebates! You can even restructure, rename or delete entire debates if necessary. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

In Czechia, there is a debate whether it should adopt euro, thereby abandoning its own currency, the Czech crown/Czech koruna. The question of this debate is not whether "not yet" but rather whether "ever". The not-yet question concerns meeting convergence criteria, etc., and is a rather different debate.

Czechia should adopt euro

Pros

Pro Czechia is obliged to do so.^[1]
Pro Adopting euro would reduce the economic burden associated with currency risk, which pertains to both importers from the E.U. and exporters to the E.U. That is to say, an exporter to the E.U. has to manage the risk that the price obtained upon export will be less than expected as a result of unfavorable change in currency rate. Similarly for an importer. The typical management technique is probably to set aside some financial assets as a reserve, and the revenue loss (opportunity cost) of these assets is the economic cost of the risk management.
- Con The Swiss with their own currency have the same kind of burden/cost and yet they are doing just fine, economically. Other advanced economies in Europe doing just fine without euro include Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Pro Adopting euro would simplify private travels abroad for Czech tourists and travels into Czechia for foreign tourists.
Pro Slovaks already did that; Czechia, one of the two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia, should follow the suit instead of being left behind.
- Con This presupposes that Slovaks (Slovakia; who adopted euro) are better role model for Czechia than e.g. Switzerland (with its own currency). And that presupposition is far from obvious.

Cons

Con Having own currency is a symbol of national sovereignty. By keeping the Czech crown, Czechia can keep the company of proud countries such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland. (Subargument: being in European Union is bad enough as for reduction of sovereignty; no need to add loss of currency to the wound.) (Rightwing and perhaps populist SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy) is a party that links euro adoption with reduced sovereignty^[2])
Con Having own currency means Czechia can run its own monetary policy (by regulating money supply). Adopting euro would mean delegating the monetary policy to the European Central Bank (ECB). Thus, of the two key items of governmental regulation of the economy, the fiscal policy and monetary policy, Czechia would lose one of them. (A similar argument is made by ODS, Civic Democratic Party^[3])
Con The members of the Eurozone may end up guaranteeing debts of other members (e.g. Greece) despite the rules set up to the contrary. (To be done: find a good expert source explaining the matter and ensuring this is accurate.) (A similar argument is made by ODS, Civic Democratic Party ^[3]).
Con Should Czechia ever want to follow the role model of the U.K. and exit the E.U. (the complaint being e.g. the excessive bureaucracy producing too many rules that are too burdensome to implement and keep, reduced democratic character, etc.), keeping its own currency as the U.K. did would be vital.

References

↑ Euro - dotazy veřejnosti k zavedení eura v České republice, cnb.cz (in Czech)
↑ Přijetí eura by fatálně poškodilo Českou republiku, spd.cz (in Czech)
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 Euro ano nebo ne?, ods.cz (in Czech)

Czechia should adopt euro

Pros

Cons

References

Further reading