Malta's SME's and the adoption of the euro

Abstract

The advent of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) among the European Union member states, which led the path to the single currency, has brought with it new opportunities and challenges for SMEs. With the introduction of the Euro on 1 st January 2002, twelve national currencies have disappeared thus creating a single currency market of 300 million people. Ten new member states joint the EU in 1 st January 2004 and these are Cyprus Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. These countries have to adopt the Euro at a certain point in time. Five of them already joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II). These are Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta and Slovenia. In this dissertation, first we are going to look at the foreign scenario and then to the Maltese scenario with a particular attention to the Survey: 'Maltese SMEs and the Euro'. This survey is conducted personally by me and represents the opinion of 50 Maltese SMEs. The analysis of the survey can be found in Chapter 4 of this dissertation. It is concluded that Maltese SMEs are still misinformed this must be the responsibility of intermediaries. At the moment head of businesses think that their competition will be affected negatively but the major part of them are confident that their business will succeed. This chapter is concluded by providing the main necessary preparations that business' owners have to take in consideration to succeed in the transition.