Euro info campaign needs to sharpen up

Cyprus has cruised smoothly towards winning EC and ECB approval to join the euro-zone in January 2008 as the country managed to satisfy all the economic criteria for entry. The euro awareness campaign, however, was singled out as “poor and inadequate”, something that the Financial Mirror has been warning the Finance Minister for several months now.

It is ironic that the highly qualified and extremely efficient Minister of Finance cannot stand up to the Finance Ministry mandarins running the euro-awareness campaign and tell them to get their act together.

Congratulations are due to European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Joaquin Almunia for acting in a professional way and telling Sarris what he should have done weeks ago.

During a televised news conference in Brussels after announcing Cyprus had passed the test on economic criteria, Almunia praised Malta for its programme to prepare the public but he said Cyprus was lagging behind.
“From our point of view Malta is doing very well. In the case of Cyprus the authorities should strengthen preparatory work and I hope they will work hard in the next months,” Almunia said.

He said Cyprus should make use of the experiences of other countries and also that of Slovenia, which adopted the euro this year. Preparations must be made to avoid any sort of abuses during the changeover, Almunia said.

All opinion polls carried during the recent weeks and months have shown a steady decline in support for the euro, not because Cypriots don’t like the common currency, but because they are afraid that they will be over-charged and ripped off, and as usual, the government will not be able to protect them.

Negative sentiment is now believed to be above 60% and as yet, the Ministry of Finance and the PR firm do not have a credible plan to turn the tide. We don’t know who is feeding information to Juergen Kroeger, Director of the Directorate General of Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN), who is of the opinion that the national changeover plan is gathering strength.

If anybody believes that by winning over the bank employees, accountants and public sector staff who are happy to skip work to attend the one-off seminars, the euro fight has been won over, then they are dead wrong.

Kroeger must have inside information of a new barometer due out soon which was based on the same questions as last year’s and shows an improvement in the mood, but that is suspect since knowing Cypriot pollsters working on account of Eurobarometer, we are sure they got instructions from “above” to increase the percentage of the population more likely to favour euro adoption and thus show an improvement.
We believe the only way to salvage the euro awareness campaign is to change the composition of the committee, give the job to the Central Bank with a clear mandate and put people to be responsible for results. If they take the job, then they should be responsible for the results, otherwise, the public will not trust its new currency and that, in our opinion would be a shame as the euro deserves better treatment. We are sure, if all aspects are correctly explained, Cypriots will embrace the euro as they have done so many other times with other changes.

Remember, Cyprus adopted the kilos, meters, kilometers, cents and so much more without a hitch. This country is smart enough to digest anything thrown its way, but the people here need to be treated correctly and informed properly. As yet, nothing of the sort has happened. It’s time somebody got his act together!

The Publishers