Meanwhile, "there is no question" that membership of the euro zone shelters small countries like Slovakia from global financial turmoil, he said.
His comments come as EU finance ministers meet today (4 March) in Brussels to assess the economic stability and convergence programmes of the bloc's 'new' member states.
"The euro is now clearly more than just the sum of the parts that created it" and "it is likely to become stronger, particularly because the dollar is expecting some difficulties that seem more long-term," said Professor Cobham. "The key thing is that if the euro zone is a large currency block, it is an area where currency relations are stabilised, which promotes trade, investment and growth," he added.
Although he conceded that the 'new' EU countries would have to pay for euro-zone membership "with some loss of flexibility," Cobham insisted that "flexibility for a country like Slovakia is in no case anywhere near to being [a] serious [issue]".
He does not think it is a negative thing that some of the 'new' member states need "a little bit more time" to prepare to adopt the single currency, but admits that "if they were not able to get in for the next ten years" then "that would represent a serious unwillingness".
Rejecting suggestions that 'real convergence' should be part of the euro-zone membership criteria, Cobham says "in some respects, countries that are weaker in terms of real convergence tend to get more from entering monetary union". Moreover, he does not believe Slovakia's trade relations with non-euro members like Hungary, Poland or the Czech Republic would suffer if it became the first country in the region to adopt the single currency because "all of these countries are trading heavily with the euro zone".
He highlights the "large gains" made by Portugal - "which had all sorts of structural problems" and a lower average income level than other countries when it joined - as a positive example of what Slovakia and the other central European countries may experience when they adopt the currency.
Regarding the 'old' member states, Cobham describes the decisions by the UK, Denmark and Sweden to remain out of the euro zone so far as "highly political" ones, but insists that there is also an economic aspect to the UK's reluctance to join related to the decade-long overvaluation of sterling.
Finally, the professor rejects suggestions that the position of the UK financial services sector is influencing the decision to stay out, claiming that "the City of London is not particularly anti-euro" and indeed is "already in a kind of euro zone as an enormous amount of the activity that goes on [there] is in euro".
To read the interview with Professor Cobham in full, please click here.
