Bulgaria and the euro government, notably economy minister Petar Dimitrov, have speculated about unilaterally introducing the euro, which was not well-met by the European Commission. The lev is not part of ERM-II, but since the launch of the euro in 1999, it has been pegged to the euro at a fixed rate of €1 = BGN 1.95583 through a strictly managed currency board. In all of the three latest annual assessment reports, Bulgaria managed to comply with four out of the five economic convergence criteria for euro adoption, only failing to comply with the criteria requiring the currency of the state to have been
Currency board Helena continue to operate currency boards, backing their locally printed currency notes with pound sterling reserves. A gold standard is a special case of a currency board where the value of the national currency is linked to the value of gold instead of a foreign currency. For a precise definition of what constitutes a currency board, including past examples, see: Currency board A currency board is a monetary authority which is required to maintain a fixed exchange rate with a foreign currency. This policy objective requires the conventional objectives of a central bank to be subordinated to the exchange rate