The creation of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the introduction of the euro is a historical event for the EU countries. The debates on the desirability of the EMU provoked a vast economic literature dealing with the theory of the optimum currency area, costs and benefits of the EMU, symmetric vs. asymmetric shocks, alternative mechanisms of adjustment in a monetary union and so forth. Until recently, for the Central European candidate countries for a full membership in the EU, these issues seemed to be too far away, as they concentrated on devising their own monetary and...