Economy of Greece Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). The country joined what is now the European Union in 1981. In 2001 Greece adopted the euro as its currency, replacing the Greek drachma at an exchange rate of 340.75 drachmae per euro. Greece is a member of the International Monetary Fund and of the World Trade Organization, and ranked 34th on Ernst & Young's Globalization Index 2011. World War II (1939-1945) devastated the country's economy, but the high levels of economic growth that followed from 1950 to 1980 have been called the Greek economic miracle. From 2000 Greece saw high levels of GDP growth above
International status and usage of the euro term of 2007, euro as a reserve currency had reached a record level of 25.6% (a +0.8% increase from the year before) – at the expense of the US dollar, which dropped to 64.8% (a drop of 1.3% from the year before). By the end of 2007, shares of euro increased to 26.4% as the dollar slumped to its lowest level since records began in 1999, 63.8%. The exact situation varies from country to country; for example, those with dollar pegs have greater dollar reserves and those with euro pegs have greater euro reserves. In 2009, Russia's foreign reserves in