Mierniki konwergencji realnej wybranych krajów strefy euro. Wnioski dla Polski

The study constitutes an attempt to join the discussion about the importance of assessing convergence in the process of enlargement of European monetary union and it focuses on the comparative aspect of the degree of similarity of Polish economy in relation to the euro area and of countries that are already part of the single currency area. The aim of the article is to present the results of the indicator analysis of real convergence, which unlike the nominal one, gives a fuller picture of the desirability of state’s participation in the monetary union. These results, on the one hand, allow to draw certain conclusions regarding Poland and supporting the process of choosing the date of adoption of the euro, and on the other hand, help to determine if during the post-crisis period there occurred tendencies indicating an increase of the degree of similarity of economies already using the common currency. The research related, apart from Poland, to selected euro zone member states: France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Lithuania, Germany, Slovakia and Italy. For the purpose of the study, it was accepted that an appropriately broad selection of indicators, allowing to achieve the necessary objectivity degree of assessment of countries’ real convergence in relation to the entire euro area, would consist of: growth rate of real GDP and correlation coefficients relating to this measure, GDP per capita as a determinant of income, GDP per hour worked as an indicator of labour productivity, hourly labour costs, level of long-term unemployment, structure of gross value added, changes in the real exchange rate, long-term real interest rate and real money market rate (which, at the same level of the nominal short-term interest rate in the euro zone, is determined in each member state by the prices’ level growth rate). As the research period the years of 2004-2014 were adopted. The conducted indicator analysis of real convergence allowed to formulate a number of observations: the degree of similarity of the analysed economies to the whole monetary union is different in most cases, depending on which sphere is related to a measure; the scale of convergence of individual economies in relation to the euro zone also varies; in respect of the analysed countries, it is difficult to notice a trend towards deepening the scale of convergence in the post-crisis period; in the case of Poland, one should not rather talk about the similarity, but about far-reaching real divergences in relation to the euro zone, which result in postponing a reasonable moment to adopt the common currency.