Bulgaria rows with Montenegro over euro notes spelling

One of the EU’s latest newcomers, Bulgaria, is threatening to block an association agreement with Montenegro over a language row concerning the spelling of the euro in Cyrillic ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting next week.

There is still uncertainty about whether EU foreign ministers will be able to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Montenegro on Monday (15 October) when they meet in Luxembourg. Such an agreement would allow the Western Balkan country to move one step closer towards EU accession.

“We have been appealing to our Bulgarian friends to allow for this signing but the problem has not yet been solved,” Portuguese EU Ambassador Alvaro Mendonca e Moura told journalists on 12 October. The Portuguese Presidency expressed its concern about the situation and still hoped to resolve the issue over the weekend.

The ambassador insisted that there was “no problem with Montenegro whatsoever”, but that the issue was rather a “horizontal problem” concerning the spelling of the euro in the Cyrillic alphabet. According to the current text, the name of the currency is spelt “euro” instead of the Cyrillic “evro” version favoured by Bulgaria.

When deciding to adopt the euro currency, EU leaders also agreed to translate other alphabets, such as the Greek alphabet spelling, which currently figures alongside the Latin spelling on the euro notes. If Bulgaria joins the common currency one day, as it is eventually expected to, the Cyrillic spelling will figure alongside these.

However, in the Bulgarian version of the country’s accession treaty, a different spelling of the euro is mentioned. Mendonca e Moura admitted that “this was a mistake”, and argued that “at this moment we simply did not have the capacity to look carefully at the Bulgarian language” while trying to explain the origin of the language row.

Appealing to his Bulgarian colleagues, the senior diplomat urged: “Let’s not make Montenegrins hostage to this.” He added: “I hope that we will be able to convince the Bulgarians that they are wrong.”

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