ANALYSIS OF THE LONG-TERM INTEREST RATE IN THE NEW MEMBER STATES DURING THE PROCESS OF ADOPTING THE EURO

With all its effects, positive and negative, the global economic and financial crisis continues to cause disturbances to the markets, causing at the same time an introspective analysis of the overall macroeconomic international and national situation. In this context, the present article aims to monitor the interest rates that comply with the Maastricht criterion in the new EU Member States (NMS). An argument for the analysis of this criterion in NMS is that the market of long-term government bond yields has also experienced a high volatility during the period 2008-2010, although paradoxically, according to theory, it is rather related to the compliance with the inflation criterion, than to the other nominal and real criteria or aspects. However, in reality, the long-term government bond yields evolution shows an accumulation of negative signals, both from the fiscal-budgetary deficits and from the other nominal and real macroeconomic variables. In this way, the paper argues why the increase of long-term interest rate differentials in the NMS in 2008- 2010 was possible, compared with the reference value and with the euro area average.