Bulgaria and the euro Bulgaria and the euro Bulgaria committed to switching its currency, the lev, to the euro upon its joining the European Union in 2007, as stated in its EU accession treaty. The transition will occur once the country meets all the euro convergence criteria; it currently meets three of the five criteria, the exception being its membership for at least two years of the EU's official exchange rate mechanism (ERM II), which it has not yet joined despite the Bulgarian lev having been pegged to the euro since its introduction in 1999. In 2011 Bulgaria's Minister of Finance Simeon Djankov stated
Russians in Bulgaria in Silistra Province) in 1674, building a church in 1750. Another Russian-inhabited village in the northeast of Bulgaria is Kazashko in Varna Province, where descendants of Kuban and Don Cossacks have been living since 1905. The members of these Old Believer communities are locally known as Lipovans (липованци, "lipovantsi") and belong to a group also inhabiting Romania and Ukraine. Their main occupation is fishing, in the Danube for the Lipovans in Tataritsa and in Lake Varna for those in Kazashko. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, largely fought on what is today Bulgarian territory, and the Liberation of Bulgaria to