Same for USD and other major currencies, as most countries have inflation around 2%. Only currency that has done significantly better is the swiss frank.

Through some technicality maybe it’s that, but food prices have increased by a large double-digit percentage. Construction materials (and laborers) are stupidly expensive.

if you think inflation rate is at 2% you must be living under a rock

On average over the last 25 years according to perplexity. (for example, found an old message about price of bread in 2000: 1.99 dutch guilders. You can now get a bread for 2 euros. That translates to 3.21%) I think a lot of people are overestimating inflation percentages over longer periods of time.

Historically other currencies have depreciated much more than the Euro. The LEV depreciated around 99% before being pegged to the Euro.

Well, the Lev was pegged to the DM first, which was a way stronger currency.

The euro has depreciated more (in both real purchasing power and against other currencies) than the Deutsche Mark.

The DM was seen as one of the strongest and most stable post-WWII currencies, while the euro has struggled with crises and inflation.

Bulgaria pegging to the DM in 1997 meant anchoring to a much harder currency than what the euro has become.

> Bulgaria pegging to the DM in 1997 meant anchoring to a much harder currency than what the euro has become.

Look, it seems you have beef with Bulgaria adopting the euro based on your other comments, but matter of fact is that many people remember the hyperinflation and the Videnov winter — especially older people that were queuing for bread with all of their lifetime savings disappearing overnight. Hence, the board staying almost 30 years. What’s scary for many is that the board in its current form is just a law that can be removed with simple majority, e.g. the current stable state could be made obsolete in a matter of a weekend — with devastating consequences for the economy. Adopting the euro means tighter integration with EU only and it’s mostly irrevocable … sadly for Russia and its proxies over here.

Bulgarians are using the DM since 1997 and the Euro since 1999, they just call it Lev. We have a currency board that requires every single Lev be covered by foreign reserves which as of current consist of 90% EUR and 10% USD, JPY, GBP and others. We cannot print money to control interest rates, worse we have no say in ECB policies at the moment.

For the Lev to be independent we have to exit the currency board but this is madness, since our exports are already adjusted to EU countries where the currency is EUR anyway.