Latvia plans to be ready to introduce the European common currency in 2014. Should it be done at all? The turmoil caused by the debt crisis in the euro area has given rise to a number of questions and doubts. Yet the answer remains unchanged: yes, of course. Why? In the future as well it will mean greater security, confidence and financial advantages: it will create good preconditions for growth. In the global crisis, the small EU member states that already use the euro - Slovenia, Slovakia, Cyprus, Malta, and also Estonia – have successfully used the euro as a shield and their economies have shrunk less as a result.

Euro introduction does not automatically guarantee growing economy, yet investors, depositors, banks, businesses and the general population tend to have more confidence in a big currency – just as a big ship is more reliable in the sea than a small boat a:

• greater investment creates new businesses and jobs;
• lower interest rates also promote economic growth;
• sense of security about deposits creates accruals that the banks can invest in the economy;
• big currency creates greater security and lesser costs during crisis.

The euro also means much lower interest rates – and for exactly that reason, in the absence of euro, Latvia will overpay about a billion lats for its external debt in the next ten years! In the next few years, the state will have to repay the debt of 2.3 billion lats it accumulated during the crisis years. It will have to be refinanced in 2014 and 2015. It is very important at what interest rate this can be done: 2-2.5% or 5.5-6%. The difference in ten years time is the aforementioned one billion lats or an equivalent to an annual health care or education budget payed out in interest every year.

We often here it said in Latvia that if we introduce the euro, it will be a good thing but even if we don't it will not change anything. Yet it will! Ten years later we will once again be perplexed: how can it be that our neighbours with their euro are living better. Of course, it is not the euro alone that makes or breaks everything. And yet it serves to discipline economic decision makers and at the same time allows us to participate in the collective decision making process and secure decisions that will help our country to develop, receive more in its budget, create new jobs and investments.

The euro is no alternative for structural reform and in any case – with or without a plan to introduce the euro – educational, health and government systems are to be rebuilt so that there is more return in terms of the invested time, people hours and money. Our neighbouring Estonia that introduced the euro in 2010 is a good example: in terms of security, Estonia outpaces us by seven steps if we apply the credit rating yardstick; it has also benefited form substantially larger foreign direct investment and its unemployment is lower but salaries higher than in Latvia, because higher productivity translates into higher earnings (average gross monthly pay in Estonia is at 821 euro against Latvia's 664 euro); the average old-age pension in Latvia is 42 euro less; it is 305 euro in Estonia and 263 euro in Latvia.