When the European Commission approved Slovakia's application to adopt the commom currency on 1 January 2009, central bank staff were likely to have been among the most delighted of the country's 5.5m citizens. "An enormous amount of analysis and discussion at various levels of the central bank has been performed and now it seems that this work has not been in vain," says Sramko. "The National Bank of Slovakia, together with all of the other official authorities, succeeded in meeting all of the