Mr. Vjaceslavs Dombrovskis:

There appears to be some hardcore economic questions but I will struggle to answer them. Why join the euro? There is a broad-based answer to that question and there is a somewhat narrow-based answer as to why one should devalue if one has a chance. In broad-based terms the reason one would want to join the euro is because it is much more than the euro. As the Deputy said this is about the future of Europe. The Europe of a single currency cannot survive without, in essence, the institutions of federalism. Do we want to have more European integration or less? If the answer is that one wants to be part of a more integrated Europe then a single currency is a feature of that more united Europe. Therefore, if one wants to be at the core of that Europe and not on the periphery, where we have been for quite some time and know the price, hence our choice in the broad base. In the narrow sense, why devalue? I used to be a professor of economics at the Stockholm School for Economics in my previous life before the Parliament. The theoretical case for this so-called internal devaluation is very weak. Recently I read the biography of Winston Churchill - I do not know how popular he was in Ireland.