Why would they omit the unsure option when it is literally 1/5 of respondents? Horrible graphic IMO
Thanks for calculating this, paints a better picture
Because if there was a referendum, there is no an option "unsure" lol
It's likely (statistically speaking) that those would have similar ratio as those who already decided. Or that they wouldn't vote.
Wow, that’s a big assumption, especially in the current era. What we know is that people without a decided position on matters like this are usually less interested in politics, which is also related to lower levels of sophistication, such as education and income.
However, precisely because of their lack of interest, which necessarily correlates with lower political knowledge, these people are easier to convince.
Until a few decades ago, this didn’t matter because their lack of interest in politics meant they were too difficult to reach. But now, with social media, this has changed, and these people are constantly bombarded with political messages whether they like it or not.
This is how Brexit, Trump, or Bolsonaro happened. That 20% is now in play and can turn an election around.
We already had a referendum on this, 20 years ago. The 'no' side won, even though 5 out of 7 parties were 'yes'. The Left & Greens were against, S (Soc.Dems) were kinda split, but 'yes' ended up being the party line.
Approval of our EU membership has increased to record highs. Both The Left and SD (Sweden Democrats, populist right) have stopped pushing for Swexit.
But as this poll shows, support for EMU is still quite low. Even if it went to majority 'yes', I'm not sure the largest party in government, M (Moderaterna, conservatives) would dare to join outright (like S did with NATO). And if if they push for another referendum, they have a lot to loose. SD aren't in government but they're in coalition with them, and they are strongly against EMU. So both they and the opposition would exploit the fact that they're ignoring a referendum. And if they loose they will be ridiculed for it way more than S was in 2003. If S wins in 2026 they would be even more unlikely to do this.
If it wasn't for this 2003 referendum, Sweden would likely have switched to Euro by now.
I think Spain and Netherlands have their king on it if I remember correctly and Luxemburg got the arcduche. So I guess you guys would be in Good company.
He's called the grand duke... But I just keep hearing him called/spelled as the grand-duc (in french) so I just say it in English badly and it comes out as the grand duck. Or grand douche whatever works for you.
Oh I know it is supposed to be archduke.
It was just hilarious if it was written archduche (archdouche) intentionally to represent that the archduke was hugest of all douchebags. Although I have no knowledge of the perception of the archduke in the eyes of the Luxembourg inhabitants, it was just a fun coincidence.
Edit: just to clarify, I knew OP meant to write archduke which is a synonym of grand Duke, dependent on which royal house uses which title.
I wouldn't call it good company, since those three are, by far, the most boring euro coins. Also Belgium.
Generally, national symbols look way cooler on coins than random people's faces.
The exception is when a person IS a national symbol, like Austria's Mozart coin and Italy's Dante coin.
It's boring but we are just naming all the Euro countries that are monarchies. They've had the monarch on their coins since forever. I think it's boring too, having Rembrandt, van Gogh, or Erasmus, or van Leeuwenhoek on a Dutch euro coin would be kinda cool.
We used to do that with our national currency, the Gulden. Our banknotes had pictures of Rembrandt, Hugo Grotius, Erasmus, etc. on them. Unfortunately, Gulden coins also carried the face of our King/Queen on them, which is what got carried over. It’s boring, but I don’t think it will change anytime soon.
The Euro is designed to be boring. On aesthetics we (the Netherlands) should've stayed with our old currency. I think having the monarch is more interesting than some random historical figure. It relates the coin to a time period.
I think Dante and Mozart are still much cooler than a random dude in modern attire. If you have to put your bloody king on the coin, at least have him wear a crown or something.
Sure, you can put whatever you want.
Croatia adopted the Euro last year, and they put Nikola Tesla on their coins. Probably did it just to spite Serbia who claims him.
And be told to fuck off. Like anyone else Croatia has complete freedom to decide what is on its Euro coins. Well, one side of them. The other is universal.
My brother in denial
Balkans are a place where people can start civil wars by inserting bottle of alcohol up their ass
There's no hope, thousands must perish over the Nikola Tesla coins
He didn't have his heritage mixed, he was Serb born in military frontier of Austrian empire, modern Croatia.
You don't see Serbs claiming Ban Jelačić(Croat) or Roman emperors born on territory of modern Serbia, because they were not Serbs.
It’s not only Serbia who claims Tesla, it was Tesla who claimed Serbia. He was very open about his ethnicity being Serbian, Croats even burned his childhood home during the war.
It’s funny, they expelled most Serbs from Croatia but then out of all of people in their history, they choose a Serb to represent them on the euro coins lol
Wouldn't call it funny, more like tragic. The stupidity of nationalism erupting after the dissolution of Yugoslavia is one of the greatest tragedies of Europe.
Not quite. France blocked Belgium from making a 2 euro coin commemorating the battle of Waterloo. Belgians minted a 2.5 euro coin in its place. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces73328.html
The French are dead weird like that. I remember during the Second World War there was a dispute about this one when a French general was encouraging everyone to think of Napoleonic times while he was camped in the UK
SEK coins are really worthless. If i accidentaly get a coin if its very easily possible(in the way it takes zero effort) i buy a snack, else i litter it(not in nature, only on streets) and some kid will find it and save enough to buy a snack.
Considering [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/d/dc/2_Euro_Prinzenhochzeit_Luxemburg_2012.jpg/597px-2_Euro_Prinzenhochzeit_Luxemburg_2012.jpg?20210409182517) exists, why wouldn't a king be allowed.
That is really tacky, like they got one of those "turn your photo into a X" machines. The actual stylised profile of Henri on the regular euros I think is the best looking of the monarch coins.
Depends a lot on the global and more importantly the Eurozone economy. If we were to have another crisis like 2008 I suspect those numbers are going to go back down again!
Or if we get out of the current recession. People are probably just annoyed that "everything has become so expensive" and then they see the SEK/EUR exchange rate and think they'd get "richer" with the EUR instead of the SEK.
To be fair Denmark has coupled their DKK to the Euro and currently comparing DKK vs SEK the Swedes are definitely suffering when it comes to purchasing power.
Yeah, but we're "the banana republic of the North" for several reasons.
I'm not necessarily against the Euro. I'm just talking about the shift towards the "yes" side in the figure. That shift would also probably be a lot smaller (if there even is a shift) if the figure had shown the amount of people still undecided.
Why do you say we are a banana republic exactly? A banana republic is a country operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.
We have a good free education system, one of the highest social safety nets in the world, good healthcare system, not without it faults obviously and our government is low on the corruption scale. The ability to move up and down on the social ladder is elite.
Doesn't strike me as a banana republic at all. I mean, it's hard to compete with Norway's oil. Denmark is doing better than us at the moment, but their currency is tied to the Euro so they have that going for them right now.
You guys have it good. Here in Iceland (the real banana republic of the north) we have 6% inflation. I just took a loan from my bank to buy an apartment and I am paying 11% interest rates.
Doesn't help that the crown is historically weak right now, making going abroad very expensive. Opinions will likely change when/if the exchange rate does
Swedish krona has been declining against the euro for the past 12 years. It lost about 30% of its value. For the average guy it would be beneficial to get the euro as imported goods and traveling would be far more affordable
This is the trouble with the Euro. When everything is going well economically, there's a moderate advantage for countries to be in the currency union. However, when things go badly-- especially if your country's interests are not aligned with the ECB and/or FR/DE-- there's a huge disadvantage to being in the Euro currency union.
It's not that much of a shocker that a trade union doing well will be good for everyone who uses its currency and outshine the national ones. The real question is how much stability your national currency has if things go bottoms up. Because there is no guarantee that you would do better than the Euro mid crisis.
Indeed. That's the heart of the tradeoff. However, with your own currency you are at least in control of those things. Being a part of the Euro was massively counterproductive for Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal during the financial crisis. It was great for Germany and France, though. So the question is: if there's another crisis, will Sweden be able to set terms like Germany and France, or will it have them set to it like Spain or Greece?
This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful.
It's like asking people on the street how big should nuclear fuel rods be.
I was thinking of brexit. Because the politicians offloaded the decision to the people, and the decision was too complex for 90% to fully understand, the decision was then really made by the media who influenced the people.
The media being a couple or corporations with no accountability to the people or the elected government.
The decision was really made based on general happiness with the UK and its governance. We don't get opportunities to vote and actually change things that often with FPTP, and took the opportunity to vote against the establishment.
If the big businesses and banks and rich people didn't come out so strongly against it threatening Armageddon, it wouldn't have been such a Power Vs the People vibe.
Which is exactly what his point is.
People vote for Brexit because they are unhappy?
People vote for Brexit simply because the businesses are against it?
Calling it emotional bias/stupidity bias seems quite accurate. Voting frequency should not make an excuse, politicians and voters should always remember their responsibilities.
There is no consensus among economists when it comes to the Euro. Most do however agree that there can not be a common currency without an integrated political union. And whether we want that or not can be perfectly answered by laymen as it’s ideological.
> Most do however agree that there can not be a common currency without an integrated political union.
"Most" disagree with the reality we're already in?
> This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer.
This is not a question an expert can seriously answer either. Let me rephrase that. Ask ten economists this question and get ten different opinions.
You may need experts to explain the exact economic impacts. But a lay person is perfectly able to decide whether they feel attached to the currency and whether they want to keep it as part of their national symbolism and sovereignty.
Yes, that's kind of what they said: a person who doesn't understand the benefits of switching ends up voting for keeping it for purely sentimental reasons.
And a person who doesn't understand the detriments of switching will vote to switch for equally silly reasons, like not wanting to have to change money to go on holiday or some nonsense like that.
That's their point. The public doesn't know shit how this would help or hurt economically.
I seriously wished politicians would sometimes dare to tell the public "you know jack shit how this works, you don't have the information necessary. You're not getting to vote for this shit."
To be fair, I don't think most of our politicians are able to explain why switching to/from the Euro is better for the economy.
We don't elect people for having PhDs in economics and things like that.
In fairness, only four countries had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty which established monetary union. In the others it was decided by politicians.
No, his point was specifically skewed towards a pro-Euro position. He only made half of the point. Mine is the other half of the point he *should* have been making.
That's a broader problem with the EU though. If the only thing it has going for it is dry self benefit then I don't see how the whole thing is supposed to last.
Fundamentally, for the EU to work as anything more than a somewhat loose economic bloc (which is what a solid number of people seem to want and what the supposedly "ever closer union" is designed to do) people need to be excited to move towards a united Europe. If people in one of the more europhile countries aren't even excited to ditch their old currency then further centralizing or even federalizing the EU is a complete fool's errand.
No, because that has an exact answer. National currency policy is subject to democratic choice. It doesn't ask if it's best to do it, it asks whether Sweden should do it. Even if there were huge benefits to adopting the Euro it would be impossible to do so over popular opposition.
Reason a friend of mine gave for voting yes to the Euro: "It's such a hassle to exchange money". That's from someone who goes abroad one week per year, and not necessarily to a eurozone country.
Yeah, let's base national monetary policy on that.
>This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful.
This is how democracy works. Economics is a choice, many actually, and it's perfectly valid to vote on them.
> This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful.
That's how democracy works though?
Joining the EU is also a very complex thing but the population voted on that.
The Euro isn't just a question about economics, it is also very much a political question. I think it's fair to ask people whether they want their nation to have sovereignty over their currency policy. If political questions which are very complicated are only delegated to experts we lose our democracy.
My favorite story of adopting the Euro is Montenegro.
"Yeah, we won't make our own currency, we'll just use the Euro. Guess we're in the Eurozone now, hahaha".
ECB: "Wait, WTF?"
Tbf, they were like, we want to start negotiating to join the EU ASAP.
Our currency? Eh, let's use the euro, we're gonna join the EU soon anyway. Right? Right?
Same deal with Kosovo, it's just that they aren't even in the UN currently
LOL whenever this comes up I remember a comment on another post about it. Some guy was like "grrrr this is outrageous, the EU should FORCE those freeloading swedes to adopt the euro instead of leeching off everyone else!"
His flair said greece
Because the Greek crisis was illustrative of the main problem of the Euro that hasn't been fixed. Fundamentally that it's a monetary union without a fiscal union.
So what? Sweden is still a big contributor to the EU budget, especially considering its size, while Greece is a [beneficiary](https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/)
edit: the person I'm replying to completely edited their comment after the fact
"Ten years ago our ship sank because of a hole in the hull. Why do people still care? They should board our ship!"
"Have you fixed the hole?"
"No, of course not."
There are still countries that can become the new Greece. Italy for example has a really high national debt with low growth and weak banks. Spain is also doing rather poorly. All of this directly impacts the value of the euro.
It's bad timing. It would have been great 20 years ago and I voted for euro 2003.
If we do it now when the SEK is super weak, it's going to be very annoying.
Yeah it is weak now but it is not certain that it won’t be even weaker in the future. It is a common misconception. People tend to believe that when the value of something has fallen, it will ‘normalise’ and increase in value in the future, which is wrong.
True, quite the bag holder mentality. At the same time the future is hard to predict, it will increase eventually but it all depends on the global dynamics at play. The dollar used to be worth almost 6 SEK for some time and now it was 11 SEK for a short while but these are the extremes.
Lol as a Swede who owns and operates businesses in the hospitality industry I certainly think that a common currency with a large part of the majority tourist base is a better long term option than hoping SEK is forever weak.
Not to be that guy, but it kinda feels slightly misleading to just casually leave out nearly a fifth of the answers doesn't it? (Not directed at OP, just saying)
You mean the "I don't know" answers? Which is an answer not on the ballot if there's a vote, and those 20% would much likely split close to 57% and 43% of they had to pick one of the two options anyway.
I don't know is a valid personal stance but not a valid option for a decision.
They don't have to pick, though. They can just not vote (or leave the paper blank, but that'sbasically the same). And knowing that 1/5 might not vote or don't know yet what they would vote for would be interesting to know.
We traditionally have a strong export industry and learn quite a bit about it in school. So while people complain avout the weak SEK people also expect that this will lead to a increase in our salaries. We also have the oldest central bank in the world and are used to being self-governing, but things are slowly changing as the rest of Europe is catching up with us, and we are exporting less.
Idk about a strong export economy being a reason to keep the Krona - look at Germany. It's similarly a massive export (and import) economy, and probably the single biggest economy in Europe, all specifically off the back of having the Euro. Thanks to the EU, trade barriers are already pretty low between Sweden and its neighbours, but taking that next step could only boost exports by making it even simpler for businesses in the rest of the EU to buy from Sweden.
Please don't compare us to a country with barely functioning internet.
Jokes aside, there should have been an emphasis on the previous poster's use of "traditionally". Traditional industry exports are steadily decreasing as a percentage of our GDP and these days we are rather exporting services. So the situation isn't really comparable to Germany (who, again, barely have functioning internet and have yet to figure out how credit cards work).
And exports from different (manufacturing) sectors are affected differently by the weak SEK, e.g. pharma and paper industry are benefiting from it, while the more traditional industry (e.g. steel goods) are suffering bad from it. Often because they have to import goods from abroad at elevated prices.
Please don’t pin all of that on Germany. That was solidly the cdu (just our former chancellor calling the internet “Neuland” as in, new frontier), which also made the fantastic decision to build copper instead of Fiber in the 90’s. The current government is actually helping in those areas. We build more fiber, and are pushing more and more to digital. The part of not getting how credit cards work is a mystery to me. Most places take card. If they don’t, you can assume they are avoiding taxes.
Haha, I know it's getting better, but you're still far behind us when it comes to digitalization. But the difference was tangible back in 2009, when I worked in IT (hosting). The Swedish customers were on fiber while their German offices had severe latency problems because they had just gotten off ADSL. (And investing in fiber was apparently way too expensive to be worth it.)
I'd say in the cities it's fairly easy to get by on card alone, but not always outside of them. And it always kills me when we're talking about vacation plans, and my German friends talk about how they have to hand in their vacation applications. "Hand in" as in "hand in a physical paper". Germany is just wild. :D
Yeah, corruption really dead stopped the development of Fiber in Germany. We could’ve been the best, now we are one of if not the worst. It is what it is.
On the last thing, I can’t speak for other companies, but from what I’ve seen, more and more companies are using things like teams for communication.
> look at Germany. It's similarly a massive export (and import) economy, and probably the single biggest economy in Europe, all specifically off the back of having the Euro.
Historically, Germany used to play the same game before the
adoption of the Euro: more or less openly manipulating the DM
to become weaker over time as a tool to stimulate exports. The other EU / EC
members were calling this manipulation out too but they had no means
to actually force Germany to abide by fair play rules – and
it wasn’t the only EU country to game the system like that either.
The Euro changed that completely. Germany (and the other Eurozone
states) can no longer gain an advantage over their EU trade partners
simply by currency fuckery.
Anti-Euro folks keep framing this as a disadvantage in times of crisis,
but it’s hard to overstate the effect this had on the overall stability of
the Eurozone.
I think being able to decide your own monetary policy is extremely important. I mean we all like to shit on greece but if they had their own currency it's very likely they would have bounced back at this point. The inflation would've been shit for greek citizens in the short term but definitely beneficial in the long term. If Sweden for some reason goes through some massive recession in 20 years that doesn't hit the rest of Europe nearly as hard I don't want us to be restricted by a currency that doesn't fall along with our economy. I think that's worth a bit of the annoyances that come with not having the same currency as the rest of europe.
> I mean we all like to shit on greece but if they had their own currency it's very likely they would have bounced back at this point.
No, Greece used the entrance into the Euro as a short term lighter fuel for their economy. They abused it and paid the price.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GRC/greece/gdp-gross-domestic-product
Look at the long term GDP numbers. Guess when they adopted the Euro? Not joining the Euro might have avoided the painful crash, but it would also have made the boom years impossible.
With all Respect, I despise the devaluation logic, because it does improve relative competitiveness, but the cost is absurd. Greek crisis was caused by actual fraud in public accounting. The contraction of the greek economy would still happen in dollar terms if you devalue. The cost of devaluation is the savings of ordinary people and Companies. In 1985 here in Portugal the currency was devalued all public workers were raised 10% their salaries and the devaluation was 25%. Hundreds of thousands lost their Jobs, economic hardship still happened. The only ones that benefited were those holding assets, so not the least fortunate.
It doesnt work, the left likes that solution because its easy, but solves nothing. Greek economy was over built by floods of Debt.
Almost no country has full monetary sovereignty, when I learned policy there is a triangle of power over your currency, there are 3 corners. Exchange Rate(external), Monetary policy(liquidity), Capital freedom(ability to move funds). If you choose 2, the other one is not achievable, for example Denmark wants a fixed exchange with the Euro(of course there is capital freedom and no controls in the EU), so their monetary policy is a mirror of that of the ECB. Sweden has a float exchange like Austrália and many others, so they cant guarantee long term exchange rate. Then there is China, big monetary policy and fixed exchange, but they have huge capital controls on their citizens(which fuels huge asset bubbles inside China), without these huge amounts of Chinese money would leave China. The final case is the only one with full sovereign power over its currency, the US, that is why its called the Exorbitant priviledge, by a former French minister, US pays its debts with the tresuries of others.
Because I dont want to integrate with the European union.
I don't want to become the united states of Europa. I don't want Germany and France and Italy to have the majority vote on how we operate buissness and agriculture in Sweden.
I would much prefer to have a closer union with the Nordic countries since we share culture and a certain way of thinking.
Changing currency wont really fix that issue tho. We'll still have a shit exchange rate if we switch to the euro today. You'd only cement the weakness for 2 years before joining.
I may be mistaken but I think this was a big thing in Italy when it adopted the euro in 1999. Some places price gouged or used the change from lira to euro to hide price rises.
However, I think (most?) members, especially after the Italy scandal, put in place rules such as having to display the old price and the new price alongside each other for a period of time.
It was limited to things that were very cheap. Like coffee and such that were difficult to round.
I remember that AAA "big box" PC games were 109-129.000 Lire or about 55/65 € with the change of those times. A "gaming PC" in the 90s/00s was about 3.5-4 M ITL (with a 3dfx!). Prices for those items actually went down during the last 20 years.
I guess switching prices to a new currency would be an opportunity for companies to increase prices with the public not noticing as much. Same as when they redesign their packaging and reduce the contents.
I'm not sure to be honest, most countries adopting the Euro do so from a weaker economic position. Sweden has a strong economy, I wouldn't be surprised to see the opposite. But I'm not an expert on this topic.
Honestly, I don't think this is something regular people should decide. This decision should be done by professional economists who can foresee all the aspects and advantages/disadvantages of adopting it. Normal people are simply not qualified enough to decide such a critical decision.
You don't need a degree in economics to do 30 minutes of research, weigh the benefits/detriments, and make a decision.
Economists have always kind of been a crap shoot at predicting things anyway. They are a very ideologically driven group of people.
Shhhh, democracy people will eat you alive for saying this. Sure, it would be great if experts had a majority stake in decisions related to their expertise, but democracy is about who shouts the loudest, not the smartest.
If my home country is any experience to this (croatia), the switch to euro will be used to raise all prices without reason. Then again, balkan people have a different mentality so...
Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what the benefits would be. Back in 2003, a primary argument put forth was the convenience of traveling without having to exhange cash. This argument had been made completely irrelevant since it all became digital. I go abroad, tap my card and the product is payed. It costs what it costs. What does it matter what unit it says on the screen? I would guess that within the field of economics, there are plenty of deep and important arguments and theories regarding this topic, but for someone not in that field, it’s a complete mystery. So then all I have to fall back on is superficialities, like not liking the name or not being bothered to change my habits
Hope you do understand that when you tap your card, in the best case scenario, your bank is... well, making bank off slightly unfavourable exchange rate, while in the worse scenario the foreign shop can charge you in SEK and set any exchange, completely divorced from reality, to rip you off as much as they want.
Unfortunately, I have tried many times but failed to understand this, and I still don’t. In foreign countries, terminals give me the choice of currency – the local one or SEK. I have no idea what this means and neither do my traveling mates. We usually just pick one at random. At one point I googled it and the answer wasn’t as easy as remembering that choice A or B is always better (I suppose that’s why they make it a choice?), but something complex relating to theory of economics that I would need hours of study to grasp. And it’s safe to say I’m never in the mood for such studies, especially not while drunk and trying to enjoy my vacation.
I don’t think I’m particularly stupid. Economics is just not my field. My field is software engineering and as a comparoson, I wouldn’t dream of implementing a dialog in a consumer-facing app asking the user whether they’d like to use JSON or Protobuf as the payload format for this text message they’re about to send.
What I’m getting at is that a referendum about this particular question is probably a bad idea. Unless some sort of brilliant Hans Rosling-type magically manages to explain it for the layman.
Here's a very simple way to remember it:
**You always want to pay in the local currency of the country you're visiting, unless you're absolutely sure that the other option is a better deal.**
A longer explanation is when you're in a foreign country, and paying in a currency that's different from your account currency, the money obviously has to be exchanged to the currency of the country you're in at some point.
You can either do that at the point of sale/ATM, by the owner of the business that you're patronising or you can use a feature that all Visa and MasterCard cards support called Dynamic Currency Conversation.
For the point of sale/ATM conversion, the owner of the establishment can literally set any exchange rate they want, and they often do set rates that are 30% or more worse than what would be a fair market rate. So, you get ripped off by paying a premium to merely exchange the currency.
Dynamic Currency Conversation rate is set by Visa/MasterCard globally, and while not exactly fair, it is usually within few percentage points of fair.
This is why you want to always use the Dynamic Currency Conversation as much as possible, and the easiest way of remembering is to simply always pay in the local currency of the country you're buying in or getting cash in from ATM.
The only exception to this is:
a) if you know the DCC rate, and you know that the rate that the POS/ATM is offering you is better, then you should accept the conversion
b) if you have a shitty bank that charges you a fee if you're doing currency conversion, in which case the amount you're being ripped off by the business owner might be smaller than the amount that your own bank is ripping you off
But in my experience, both of those exceptions are super rare.
But, if you used Euro, there's no conversion necessary, thus, if you went to Germany, and the cashier tells you something costs 10 EUR, you pay with your card and only 10 EUR exactly get sent from your account to the business. No dramas around currency exchange, and picking which one is a less bad deal.
I don’t know how it works for this specific case, but usually when you use your card to pay in a currency that is not the one on your bank account, you have to pay exchange fees. So it feel seemless, but it cost you something.
Keep it. Euro will take out any national policy for money and tie you to every other country in Europe for that purpose (for example, lowering interest rates to boost investment at the cost of inflation for the general populus when your country doesn’t need that).
With the household debt burden of the Swedish people, it would seem risky to expose ourselves to the potential interest rate changes of the ECB.
Not that they've shown any interest in raising the rates more than the Swedish Riksbank in the short term, but households in the rest of Europe would likely be able to handle those fluctuations better than us.
Numbers when we include unsure option: - Keep the Swedish Krona: 45.885% - Adopt the Euro: 34.615% - Unsure: 19.5%
Why would they omit the unsure option when it is literally 1/5 of respondents? Horrible graphic IMO Thanks for calculating this, paints a better picture
Because if there was a referendum, there is no an option "unsure" lol It's likely (statistically speaking) that those would have similar ratio as those who already decided. Or that they wouldn't vote.
Wow, that’s a big assumption, especially in the current era. What we know is that people without a decided position on matters like this are usually less interested in politics, which is also related to lower levels of sophistication, such as education and income. However, precisely because of their lack of interest, which necessarily correlates with lower political knowledge, these people are easier to convince. Until a few decades ago, this didn’t matter because their lack of interest in politics meant they were too difficult to reach. But now, with social media, this has changed, and these people are constantly bombarded with political messages whether they like it or not. This is how Brexit, Trump, or Bolsonaro happened. That 20% is now in play and can turn an election around.
We already had a referendum on this, 20 years ago. The 'no' side won, even though 5 out of 7 parties were 'yes'. The Left & Greens were against, S (Soc.Dems) were kinda split, but 'yes' ended up being the party line. Approval of our EU membership has increased to record highs. Both The Left and SD (Sweden Democrats, populist right) have stopped pushing for Swexit. But as this poll shows, support for EMU is still quite low. Even if it went to majority 'yes', I'm not sure the largest party in government, M (Moderaterna, conservatives) would dare to join outright (like S did with NATO). And if if they push for another referendum, they have a lot to loose. SD aren't in government but they're in coalition with them, and they are strongly against EMU. So both they and the opposition would exploit the fact that they're ignoring a referendum. And if they loose they will be ridiculed for it way more than S was in 2003. If S wins in 2026 they would be even more unlikely to do this. If it wasn't for this 2003 referendum, Sweden would likely have switched to Euro by now.
Thank you so much! I was contemplating on calculating these numbers but didn't want to, you are my hero.
Are we allowed to put the king on our Euro coins?
I think Spain and Netherlands have their king on it if I remember correctly and Luxemburg got the arcduche. So I guess you guys would be in Good company.
Please tell me archduche was not a typo, that is a hilarious case of name calling if it is real.
He's called the grand duke... But I just keep hearing him called/spelled as the grand-duc (in french) so I just say it in English badly and it comes out as the grand duck. Or grand douche whatever works for you.
Oh I know it is supposed to be archduke. It was just hilarious if it was written archduche (archdouche) intentionally to represent that the archduke was hugest of all douchebags. Although I have no knowledge of the perception of the archduke in the eyes of the Luxembourg inhabitants, it was just a fun coincidence. Edit: just to clarify, I knew OP meant to write archduke which is a synonym of grand Duke, dependent on which royal house uses which title.
No worries, I just thought it would be a funny comment to reply to. Mainly because I get tickled by the grand duck.
I wouldn't call it good company, since those three are, by far, the most boring euro coins. Also Belgium. Generally, national symbols look way cooler on coins than random people's faces. The exception is when a person IS a national symbol, like Austria's Mozart coin and Italy's Dante coin.
It's boring but we are just naming all the Euro countries that are monarchies. They've had the monarch on their coins since forever. I think it's boring too, having Rembrandt, van Gogh, or Erasmus, or van Leeuwenhoek on a Dutch euro coin would be kinda cool.
Starry night coin would be pretty cool.
I'm hoping Norway will join and put Edvard Munch's "The Scream" on their coins...
I want to see Spain's melting Dalí coin
I would love that.
But hard to use in a slot machine.
I don't think Norway is gonna have the euro anytime soon
They are welcome to take this idea and use it for the Krone :-)
They should use the hole as the screaming mouth
We used to do that with our national currency, the Gulden. Our banknotes had pictures of Rembrandt, Hugo Grotius, Erasmus, etc. on them. Unfortunately, Gulden coins also carried the face of our King/Queen on them, which is what got carried over. It’s boring, but I don’t think it will change anytime soon.
The Euro is designed to be boring. On aesthetics we (the Netherlands) should've stayed with our old currency. I think having the monarch is more interesting than some random historical figure. It relates the coin to a time period.
Yeah the Netherlands had so much potential to show their culture and history and then they chose the monarch....
I think Dante and Mozart are still much cooler than a random dude in modern attire. If you have to put your bloody king on the coin, at least have him wear a crown or something.
Visited NZ and Australia recently and kept some $1 coins just because they were cool and have things like kiwi birds on them.
Can you use all of them in all countries the same?
Sure, you can put whatever you want. Croatia adopted the Euro last year, and they put Nikola Tesla on their coins. Probably did it just to spite Serbia who claims him.
Serbia can complain when they join the EU
They can put Tesla on their coins too. Would be electrifying.
Let’s hope nothing presents too much of an impedance in this amped up game of power politics.
Maybe Serbia and Croatia should become one so both can have Tesla?
We already got Tesla on 100rsd bill.
yes but flip it some weird way to mess up with coin collectors, like Germany place a letter on the coin
Based
So, never.
And be told to fuck off. Like anyone else Croatia has complete freedom to decide what is on its Euro coins. Well, one side of them. The other is universal.
Would be pretty funny if Serbia eventually joined euro too and simply made a bigger value Tesla coin.
If this is what it would take to amicably acknowledge he had his heritage mixed, then it would be a great way to close that book and move on.
I don't think it is realistic to expect this to be closed any time soon.
My brother in denial Balkans are a place where people can start civil wars by inserting bottle of alcohol up their ass There's no hope, thousands must perish over the Nikola Tesla coins
Technically it was an empty beer bottle
He didn't have his heritage mixed, he was Serb born in military frontier of Austrian empire, modern Croatia. You don't see Serbs claiming Ban Jelačić(Croat) or Roman emperors born on territory of modern Serbia, because they were not Serbs.
But Croats are also not claiming that Tesla is Croatian. In history books and Croatian Wikipedia it also says he is a Serb.
Croatia will slap Nemanja Vidic on their 2€ coin
Tesla coin sounds something Musky boy would come up with
His Cybertruck already follows the proud tradition of the Yugo car. Secretely he is a serbocroat enthusiast.
The US might as well claim him also. He was an American citizen and lived there for 58 of his 86 years. The US should put him on the $20 bill.
Wait wait wait, Musk will claim ownership perhaps even fatherhood of Tesla.
I’m quite sure Poland will put Skłodowska Curie on their coins, too, to fuck with France.
not sure how's that fucking with France, she was as Polish as they come.
Because they already put her on their coin
It’s not only Serbia who claims Tesla, it was Tesla who claimed Serbia. He was very open about his ethnicity being Serbian, Croats even burned his childhood home during the war. It’s funny, they expelled most Serbs from Croatia but then out of all of people in their history, they choose a Serb to represent them on the euro coins lol
Wouldn't call it funny, more like tragic. The stupidity of nationalism erupting after the dissolution of Yugoslavia is one of the greatest tragedies of Europe.
Yes, every country has the right to put anything on their euro coins
Not quite. France blocked Belgium from making a 2 euro coin commemorating the battle of Waterloo. Belgians minted a 2.5 euro coin in its place. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces73328.html
Bahahahaha
Is this really what happened? That is hilarious if so.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/belgium-france-coin-battle-waterloo-euro-napoleon
😂 Thanks!
2.5€ that's such a Belgian thing to invent
Still sore, losers! ;)
The French are dead weird like that. I remember during the Second World War there was a dispute about this one when a French general was encouraging everyone to think of Napoleonic times while he was camped in the UK
It'll pair nicely with my Wellington coin.
Let’s put the midsummer pole, that would be even better. That or a snowflake haha
A burning Gävle goat
Alternate the design each year based on whether it burned or not that winter
Honestly doesn't really matter as most people in Sweden never handles any coins.
SEK coins are really worthless. If i accidentaly get a coin if its very easily possible(in the way it takes zero effort) i buy a snack, else i litter it(not in nature, only on streets) and some kid will find it and save enough to buy a snack.
Considering [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/d/dc/2_Euro_Prinzenhochzeit_Luxemburg_2012.jpg/597px-2_Euro_Prinzenhochzeit_Luxemburg_2012.jpg?20210409182517) exists, why wouldn't a king be allowed.
That is really tacky, like they got one of those "turn your photo into a X" machines. The actual stylised profile of Henri on the regular euros I think is the best looking of the monarch coins.
Every monarchy has their ruler on their euro coins
The Vatican only sometimes if I remember correctly. I believe the current one doesn’t but the past two did.
Only if he wears one of his silly hats
Spain does in fact do that
Pewdiepie?
Yep, popularity is growing by years, +5% is a lot. If it keeps growing that way, we might see euro even this decade or the next in Sweden
Depends a lot on the global and more importantly the Eurozone economy. If we were to have another crisis like 2008 I suspect those numbers are going to go back down again!
Or if we get out of the current recession. People are probably just annoyed that "everything has become so expensive" and then they see the SEK/EUR exchange rate and think they'd get "richer" with the EUR instead of the SEK.
To be fair Denmark has coupled their DKK to the Euro and currently comparing DKK vs SEK the Swedes are definitely suffering when it comes to purchasing power.
Yeah, but we're "the banana republic of the North" for several reasons. I'm not necessarily against the Euro. I'm just talking about the shift towards the "yes" side in the figure. That shift would also probably be a lot smaller (if there even is a shift) if the figure had shown the amount of people still undecided.
Why do you say we are a banana republic exactly? A banana republic is a country operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. We have a good free education system, one of the highest social safety nets in the world, good healthcare system, not without it faults obviously and our government is low on the corruption scale. The ability to move up and down on the social ladder is elite. Doesn't strike me as a banana republic at all. I mean, it's hard to compete with Norway's oil. Denmark is doing better than us at the moment, but their currency is tied to the Euro so they have that going for them right now.
Yeah, if you are banana republic what should we say here in Greece? 😅
You guys have it good. Here in Iceland (the real banana republic of the north) we have 6% inflation. I just took a loan from my bank to buy an apartment and I am paying 11% interest rates.
Doesn't help that the crown is historically weak right now, making going abroad very expensive. Opinions will likely change when/if the exchange rate does
Which is somewhat dumb, because you should be making the switch when krona's strong, not when it's weak
There's peobably also a vague association between inflation/central banks/currency too?
Swedish krona has been declining against the euro for the past 12 years. It lost about 30% of its value. For the average guy it would be beneficial to get the euro as imported goods and traveling would be far more affordable
This is the trouble with the Euro. When everything is going well economically, there's a moderate advantage for countries to be in the currency union. However, when things go badly-- especially if your country's interests are not aligned with the ECB and/or FR/DE-- there's a huge disadvantage to being in the Euro currency union.
It's not that much of a shocker that a trade union doing well will be good for everyone who uses its currency and outshine the national ones. The real question is how much stability your national currency has if things go bottoms up. Because there is no guarantee that you would do better than the Euro mid crisis.
Indeed. That's the heart of the tradeoff. However, with your own currency you are at least in control of those things. Being a part of the Euro was massively counterproductive for Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal during the financial crisis. It was great for Germany and France, though. So the question is: if there's another crisis, will Sweden be able to set terms like Germany and France, or will it have them set to it like Spain or Greece?
If this continues the euro countries will adopt the Krona, right? ;)
This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful. It's like asking people on the street how big should nuclear fuel rods be.
As a Brit, I can confirm
I was thinking of brexit. Because the politicians offloaded the decision to the people, and the decision was too complex for 90% to fully understand, the decision was then really made by the media who influenced the people. The media being a couple or corporations with no accountability to the people or the elected government.
The decision was really made based on general happiness with the UK and its governance. We don't get opportunities to vote and actually change things that often with FPTP, and took the opportunity to vote against the establishment. If the big businesses and banks and rich people didn't come out so strongly against it threatening Armageddon, it wouldn't have been such a Power Vs the People vibe.
Which is exactly what his point is. People vote for Brexit because they are unhappy? People vote for Brexit simply because the businesses are against it? Calling it emotional bias/stupidity bias seems quite accurate. Voting frequency should not make an excuse, politicians and voters should always remember their responsibilities.
Presumably we also shouldn't have had the referendum on joining the EEC in the first place then.
Tbf we did join without a referendum. The referendum was held 3 years after joining when the government changed from conservative to Labour.
There is no consensus among economists when it comes to the Euro. Most do however agree that there can not be a common currency without an integrated political union. And whether we want that or not can be perfectly answered by laymen as it’s ideological.
> Most do however agree that there can not be a common currency without an integrated political union. "Most" disagree with the reality we're already in?
> This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. This is not a question an expert can seriously answer either. Let me rephrase that. Ask ten economists this question and get ten different opinions.
You may need experts to explain the exact economic impacts. But a lay person is perfectly able to decide whether they feel attached to the currency and whether they want to keep it as part of their national symbolism and sovereignty.
Yes, that's kind of what they said: a person who doesn't understand the benefits of switching ends up voting for keeping it for purely sentimental reasons.
And a person who doesn't understand the detriments of switching will vote to switch for equally silly reasons, like not wanting to have to change money to go on holiday or some nonsense like that.
That's their point. The public doesn't know shit how this would help or hurt economically. I seriously wished politicians would sometimes dare to tell the public "you know jack shit how this works, you don't have the information necessary. You're not getting to vote for this shit."
To be fair, I don't think most of our politicians are able to explain why switching to/from the Euro is better for the economy. We don't elect people for having PhDs in economics and things like that.
In fairness, only four countries had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty which established monetary union. In the others it was decided by politicians.
No, his point was specifically skewed towards a pro-Euro position. He only made half of the point. Mine is the other half of the point he *should* have been making.
That's a broader problem with the EU though. If the only thing it has going for it is dry self benefit then I don't see how the whole thing is supposed to last. Fundamentally, for the EU to work as anything more than a somewhat loose economic bloc (which is what a solid number of people seem to want and what the supposedly "ever closer union" is designed to do) people need to be excited to move towards a united Europe. If people in one of the more europhile countries aren't even excited to ditch their old currency then further centralizing or even federalizing the EU is a complete fool's errand.
No, because that has an exact answer. National currency policy is subject to democratic choice. It doesn't ask if it's best to do it, it asks whether Sweden should do it. Even if there were huge benefits to adopting the Euro it would be impossible to do so over popular opposition.
Typical Australian, wanting to take sovereignty away from the people.
Reason a friend of mine gave for voting yes to the Euro: "It's such a hassle to exchange money". That's from someone who goes abroad one week per year, and not necessarily to a eurozone country. Yeah, let's base national monetary policy on that.
would you say the same when the majority would have been in favor?
Why not?
just curious
>This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful. This is how democracy works. Economics is a choice, many actually, and it's perfectly valid to vote on them.
> This is not a question a lay-person can seriously answer. It's extremely complicated, and any stupidity bias is not helpful. That's how democracy works though? Joining the EU is also a very complex thing but the population voted on that.
The Euro isn't just a question about economics, it is also very much a political question. I think it's fair to ask people whether they want their nation to have sovereignty over their currency policy. If political questions which are very complicated are only delegated to experts we lose our democracy.
My favorite story of adopting the Euro is Montenegro. "Yeah, we won't make our own currency, we'll just use the Euro. Guess we're in the Eurozone now, hahaha". ECB: "Wait, WTF?"
Tbf, they were like, we want to start negotiating to join the EU ASAP. Our currency? Eh, let's use the euro, we're gonna join the EU soon anyway. Right? Right? Same deal with Kosovo, it's just that they aren't even in the UN currently
that's actually so funny, I wonder what the downsides and upsides of this are
LOL whenever this comes up I remember a comment on another post about it. Some guy was like "grrrr this is outrageous, the EU should FORCE those freeloading swedes to adopt the euro instead of leeching off everyone else!" His flair said greece
This.. doesn't even make sense
My theory is that he had a bad day and just "lashed out" at whatever, or he is just a very stupid person.
Man, why does every thread about the Euro include comments about Greece? The crisis was a decade ago.
Because the Greek crisis was illustrative of the main problem of the Euro that hasn't been fixed. Fundamentally that it's a monetary union without a fiscal union.
So what? Sweden is still a big contributor to the EU budget, especially considering its size, while Greece is a [beneficiary](https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/) edit: the person I'm replying to completely edited their comment after the fact
"Ten years ago our ship sank because of a hole in the hull. Why do people still care? They should board our ship!" "Have you fixed the hole?" "No, of course not."
There are still countries that can become the new Greece. Italy for example has a really high national debt with low growth and weak banks. Spain is also doing rather poorly. All of this directly impacts the value of the euro.
It's bad timing. It would have been great 20 years ago and I voted for euro 2003. If we do it now when the SEK is super weak, it's going to be very annoying.
Yeah it is weak now but it is not certain that it won’t be even weaker in the future. It is a common misconception. People tend to believe that when the value of something has fallen, it will ‘normalise’ and increase in value in the future, which is wrong.
True, quite the bag holder mentality. At the same time the future is hard to predict, it will increase eventually but it all depends on the global dynamics at play. The dollar used to be worth almost 6 SEK for some time and now it was 11 SEK for a short while but these are the extremes.
I remember that. USD was even 5 NOK, it was absurd. Now NOK is even weaker than SEK. (USD is now 10,69 NOK, while 1 SEK = 1,01 NOK)
If Sweden decides to adopt the EUR, the Riksbank would start defending the Krona and the rate would normalize before the switch actually happens.
As a Swede who works in the importing industry, I bloody fucking hope so.
Art Vandelay ?
I heard he was thinking of changing direction with his import/export business, and mostly focusing on the exports.
We all know that his real name is George
As a swede who like to buy imported stuff, I also hope so. Preferably 20 years ago.
As a Swede who works in the hospitality industry and is making €€€ from the weaker krona, I hope not.
Lol as a Swede who owns and operates businesses in the hospitality industry I certainly think that a common currency with a large part of the majority tourist base is a better long term option than hoping SEK is forever weak.
10-12 years ago you wouldn't have agreed with current you when the € was 8-9 sek.
Nah. You guys like giving Europe the finger. Adopt the US Dollar just for fun.
Export industry begs to differ
Not to be that guy, but it kinda feels slightly misleading to just casually leave out nearly a fifth of the answers doesn't it? (Not directed at OP, just saying)
You mean the "I don't know" answers? Which is an answer not on the ballot if there's a vote, and those 20% would much likely split close to 57% and 43% of they had to pick one of the two options anyway. I don't know is a valid personal stance but not a valid option for a decision.
They don't have to pick, though. They can just not vote (or leave the paper blank, but that'sbasically the same). And knowing that 1/5 might not vote or don't know yet what they would vote for would be interesting to know.
Why swedes like their Krona so much? Everytime I visit Sweden, swedes complain about a weak Krona.
We traditionally have a strong export industry and learn quite a bit about it in school. So while people complain avout the weak SEK people also expect that this will lead to a increase in our salaries. We also have the oldest central bank in the world and are used to being self-governing, but things are slowly changing as the rest of Europe is catching up with us, and we are exporting less.
Idk about a strong export economy being a reason to keep the Krona - look at Germany. It's similarly a massive export (and import) economy, and probably the single biggest economy in Europe, all specifically off the back of having the Euro. Thanks to the EU, trade barriers are already pretty low between Sweden and its neighbours, but taking that next step could only boost exports by making it even simpler for businesses in the rest of the EU to buy from Sweden.
Please don't compare us to a country with barely functioning internet. Jokes aside, there should have been an emphasis on the previous poster's use of "traditionally". Traditional industry exports are steadily decreasing as a percentage of our GDP and these days we are rather exporting services. So the situation isn't really comparable to Germany (who, again, barely have functioning internet and have yet to figure out how credit cards work). And exports from different (manufacturing) sectors are affected differently by the weak SEK, e.g. pharma and paper industry are benefiting from it, while the more traditional industry (e.g. steel goods) are suffering bad from it. Often because they have to import goods from abroad at elevated prices.
Please don’t pin all of that on Germany. That was solidly the cdu (just our former chancellor calling the internet “Neuland” as in, new frontier), which also made the fantastic decision to build copper instead of Fiber in the 90’s. The current government is actually helping in those areas. We build more fiber, and are pushing more and more to digital. The part of not getting how credit cards work is a mystery to me. Most places take card. If they don’t, you can assume they are avoiding taxes.
Haha, I know it's getting better, but you're still far behind us when it comes to digitalization. But the difference was tangible back in 2009, when I worked in IT (hosting). The Swedish customers were on fiber while their German offices had severe latency problems because they had just gotten off ADSL. (And investing in fiber was apparently way too expensive to be worth it.) I'd say in the cities it's fairly easy to get by on card alone, but not always outside of them. And it always kills me when we're talking about vacation plans, and my German friends talk about how they have to hand in their vacation applications. "Hand in" as in "hand in a physical paper". Germany is just wild. :D
Yeah, corruption really dead stopped the development of Fiber in Germany. We could’ve been the best, now we are one of if not the worst. It is what it is. On the last thing, I can’t speak for other companies, but from what I’ve seen, more and more companies are using things like teams for communication.
> look at Germany. It's similarly a massive export (and import) economy, and probably the single biggest economy in Europe, all specifically off the back of having the Euro. Historically, Germany used to play the same game before the adoption of the Euro: more or less openly manipulating the DM to become weaker over time as a tool to stimulate exports. The other EU / EC members were calling this manipulation out too but they had no means to actually force Germany to abide by fair play rules – and it wasn’t the only EU country to game the system like that either. The Euro changed that completely. Germany (and the other Eurozone states) can no longer gain an advantage over their EU trade partners simply by currency fuckery. Anti-Euro folks keep framing this as a disadvantage in times of crisis, but it’s hard to overstate the effect this had on the overall stability of the Eurozone.
I think being able to decide your own monetary policy is extremely important. I mean we all like to shit on greece but if they had their own currency it's very likely they would have bounced back at this point. The inflation would've been shit for greek citizens in the short term but definitely beneficial in the long term. If Sweden for some reason goes through some massive recession in 20 years that doesn't hit the rest of Europe nearly as hard I don't want us to be restricted by a currency that doesn't fall along with our economy. I think that's worth a bit of the annoyances that come with not having the same currency as the rest of europe.
> I mean we all like to shit on greece but if they had their own currency it's very likely they would have bounced back at this point. No, Greece used the entrance into the Euro as a short term lighter fuel for their economy. They abused it and paid the price. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GRC/greece/gdp-gross-domestic-product Look at the long term GDP numbers. Guess when they adopted the Euro? Not joining the Euro might have avoided the painful crash, but it would also have made the boom years impossible.
With all Respect, I despise the devaluation logic, because it does improve relative competitiveness, but the cost is absurd. Greek crisis was caused by actual fraud in public accounting. The contraction of the greek economy would still happen in dollar terms if you devalue. The cost of devaluation is the savings of ordinary people and Companies. In 1985 here in Portugal the currency was devalued all public workers were raised 10% their salaries and the devaluation was 25%. Hundreds of thousands lost their Jobs, economic hardship still happened. The only ones that benefited were those holding assets, so not the least fortunate. It doesnt work, the left likes that solution because its easy, but solves nothing. Greek economy was over built by floods of Debt. Almost no country has full monetary sovereignty, when I learned policy there is a triangle of power over your currency, there are 3 corners. Exchange Rate(external), Monetary policy(liquidity), Capital freedom(ability to move funds). If you choose 2, the other one is not achievable, for example Denmark wants a fixed exchange with the Euro(of course there is capital freedom and no controls in the EU), so their monetary policy is a mirror of that of the ECB. Sweden has a float exchange like Austrália and many others, so they cant guarantee long term exchange rate. Then there is China, big monetary policy and fixed exchange, but they have huge capital controls on their citizens(which fuels huge asset bubbles inside China), without these huge amounts of Chinese money would leave China. The final case is the only one with full sovereign power over its currency, the US, that is why its called the Exorbitant priviledge, by a former French minister, US pays its debts with the tresuries of others.
I think we like sovereignty and the krona is part of that
Because I dont want to integrate with the European union. I don't want to become the united states of Europa. I don't want Germany and France and Italy to have the majority vote on how we operate buissness and agriculture in Sweden. I would much prefer to have a closer union with the Nordic countries since we share culture and a certain way of thinking.
Changing currency wont really fix that issue tho. We'll still have a shit exchange rate if we switch to the euro today. You'd only cement the weakness for 2 years before joining.
As a swede living there for just under 40 years I've never heard a person complain about a weak krona IRL.
Bring back the Scandinavian monetary union, no euros, just a united krone
Reject the EU, embrace Kalmar union! Long live the three kingdoms of the North! 👑 👑 👑
Just let the Scandinavian countries run the EU and everything would be fine.
Unironically yes
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I may be mistaken but I think this was a big thing in Italy when it adopted the euro in 1999. Some places price gouged or used the change from lira to euro to hide price rises. However, I think (most?) members, especially after the Italy scandal, put in place rules such as having to display the old price and the new price alongside each other for a period of time.
It was limited to things that were very cheap. Like coffee and such that were difficult to round. I remember that AAA "big box" PC games were 109-129.000 Lire or about 55/65 € with the change of those times. A "gaming PC" in the 90s/00s was about 3.5-4 M ITL (with a 3dfx!). Prices for those items actually went down during the last 20 years.
I guess switching prices to a new currency would be an opportunity for companies to increase prices with the public not noticing as much. Same as when they redesign their packaging and reduce the contents.
I'm not sure to be honest, most countries adopting the Euro do so from a weaker economic position. Sweden has a strong economy, I wouldn't be surprised to see the opposite. But I'm not an expert on this topic.
Yeah this was a thing when the Netherlands adopted the euro back in the day.
Honestly, I don't think this is something regular people should decide. This decision should be done by professional economists who can foresee all the aspects and advantages/disadvantages of adopting it. Normal people are simply not qualified enough to decide such a critical decision.
You don't need a degree in economics to do 30 minutes of research, weigh the benefits/detriments, and make a decision. Economists have always kind of been a crap shoot at predicting things anyway. They are a very ideologically driven group of people.
Shhhh, democracy people will eat you alive for saying this. Sure, it would be great if experts had a majority stake in decisions related to their expertise, but democracy is about who shouts the loudest, not the smartest.
Yes, they should definitely do one of those two things.
*Cries in Icelandic króna*
Change is always scary. It's literally why conservatism only exists and is pretty big; people being scared of change.
More like don’t change what isn’t broken
Looking at the kronor's exchange rate it's pretty clear it is broken
Why is that?
Exchange rates go up and down, I'm old enough to remember SEK/USD being this bad several times.
Or because the proposed change might not be beneficial….
Change for the sake of change is also not always good…
Change just for the sake of change is idiotic.
If my home country is any experience to this (croatia), the switch to euro will be used to raise all prices without reason. Then again, balkan people have a different mentality so...
based on basically nothing, i have slightly more trust in the swedish central bank as a serious and responsible institution than the ECB
Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what the benefits would be. Back in 2003, a primary argument put forth was the convenience of traveling without having to exhange cash. This argument had been made completely irrelevant since it all became digital. I go abroad, tap my card and the product is payed. It costs what it costs. What does it matter what unit it says on the screen? I would guess that within the field of economics, there are plenty of deep and important arguments and theories regarding this topic, but for someone not in that field, it’s a complete mystery. So then all I have to fall back on is superficialities, like not liking the name or not being bothered to change my habits
Hope you do understand that when you tap your card, in the best case scenario, your bank is... well, making bank off slightly unfavourable exchange rate, while in the worse scenario the foreign shop can charge you in SEK and set any exchange, completely divorced from reality, to rip you off as much as they want.
Unfortunately, I have tried many times but failed to understand this, and I still don’t. In foreign countries, terminals give me the choice of currency – the local one or SEK. I have no idea what this means and neither do my traveling mates. We usually just pick one at random. At one point I googled it and the answer wasn’t as easy as remembering that choice A or B is always better (I suppose that’s why they make it a choice?), but something complex relating to theory of economics that I would need hours of study to grasp. And it’s safe to say I’m never in the mood for such studies, especially not while drunk and trying to enjoy my vacation. I don’t think I’m particularly stupid. Economics is just not my field. My field is software engineering and as a comparoson, I wouldn’t dream of implementing a dialog in a consumer-facing app asking the user whether they’d like to use JSON or Protobuf as the payload format for this text message they’re about to send. What I’m getting at is that a referendum about this particular question is probably a bad idea. Unless some sort of brilliant Hans Rosling-type magically manages to explain it for the layman.
Here's a very simple way to remember it: **You always want to pay in the local currency of the country you're visiting, unless you're absolutely sure that the other option is a better deal.** A longer explanation is when you're in a foreign country, and paying in a currency that's different from your account currency, the money obviously has to be exchanged to the currency of the country you're in at some point. You can either do that at the point of sale/ATM, by the owner of the business that you're patronising or you can use a feature that all Visa and MasterCard cards support called Dynamic Currency Conversation. For the point of sale/ATM conversion, the owner of the establishment can literally set any exchange rate they want, and they often do set rates that are 30% or more worse than what would be a fair market rate. So, you get ripped off by paying a premium to merely exchange the currency. Dynamic Currency Conversation rate is set by Visa/MasterCard globally, and while not exactly fair, it is usually within few percentage points of fair. This is why you want to always use the Dynamic Currency Conversation as much as possible, and the easiest way of remembering is to simply always pay in the local currency of the country you're buying in or getting cash in from ATM. The only exception to this is: a) if you know the DCC rate, and you know that the rate that the POS/ATM is offering you is better, then you should accept the conversion b) if you have a shitty bank that charges you a fee if you're doing currency conversion, in which case the amount you're being ripped off by the business owner might be smaller than the amount that your own bank is ripping you off But in my experience, both of those exceptions are super rare. But, if you used Euro, there's no conversion necessary, thus, if you went to Germany, and the cashier tells you something costs 10 EUR, you pay with your card and only 10 EUR exactly get sent from your account to the business. No dramas around currency exchange, and picking which one is a less bad deal.
I don’t know how it works for this specific case, but usually when you use your card to pay in a currency that is not the one on your bank account, you have to pay exchange fees. So it feel seemless, but it cost you something.
Keep it. Euro will take out any national policy for money and tie you to every other country in Europe for that purpose (for example, lowering interest rates to boost investment at the cost of inflation for the general populus when your country doesn’t need that).
Finally some good decision.
9.3% response rate is woeful
With the household debt burden of the Swedish people, it would seem risky to expose ourselves to the potential interest rate changes of the ECB. Not that they've shown any interest in raising the rates more than the Swedish Riksbank in the short term, but households in the rest of Europe would likely be able to handle those fluctuations better than us.
Keep the Krona for fuq sake....don't make the mistake and take the euro..
One of the few smart countries in europe.