Croatia and the European Commission on Tuesday approved the Balkan nation’s entry into the eurozone. This means that the country will adopt the euro on January 1 of next year with a statue of Nikola Tesla on coins.
Croatia has been a member of the European Union since 2013 and would like to replace its own currency, the kuna, with the euro. EU countries wishing to adopt the euro must meet a number of conditions. These include the rules on stable prices and interest rates, the national budget deficit and the amount of debt the country takes on.
The country meets all the requirements and can therefore offer the currency from January 1, 2023. It already received that approval a month ago, but the official exchange rate was also set by the European Commission on Tuesday. 1 euro is good for 7.53 kuna.
Countries that adopt the euro are allowed to put some national symbols on euro coins. Croatian 10, 20 and 50 cent coins bear the portrait of physicist Nikola Tesla, after whom Elon Musk named his automobile company. The scientist was born in Smiljan, Croatia.
This decision has already provoked an angry reaction from neighboring Serbia. This country believes that Tesla is Serbian because his parents were Serbian. Smiljan was part of Austria-Hungary at the time of Tesla’s birth in 1856 and then settled in Croatia. Tesla moved to the United States in 1884, where he became an American citizen.
