History of modern Greece force Greece to abandon the euro and bring back its former currency, the drachma. In April 2014, Greece returned to the global bond market as it successfully sold €3 billion worth of five-year government bonds at a yield of 4.95%. According to the IMF, Greece will have real GDP growth of 0.6% in 2014 after 5 years of decline. Following the May 2012 legislative election where the New Democracy party became the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, Samaras, leader of ND, was asked by Greek President Karolos Papoulias to try to form a government. However, after a day of
International status and usage of the euro those in the eurozone, do not participate in the European Central Bank or the Euro Group. Its international usage has also grown as a trading currency, acting as an economic or political alternative to using the United States dollar. Its increasing usage in this sense has led to its becoming the only significant challenger to the US dollar as the world's main reserve currency. Several European microstates outside the EU have adopted the euro as their currency. For EU sanctioning of this adoption, a monetary agreement must be concluded. Prior to the launch of the euro, agreements were reached with