Zdravko Marić was visibly proud that he was still able to keep this appointment.

The Croatian finance minister, who has been in office since 2016 but resigned last week, was still present in Brussels on Tuesday when the EU finance ministers officially decided to admit his country to the euro zone.

"Today is a historic day for Croatia," said Marić, who is considered to be the driving force behind the introduction of the euro alongside Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, at a small accession ceremony after the ministerial meeting.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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Croatia will become the twentieth member of the eurozone in early 2023.

It is the first euro area enlargement since Lithuania's accession in 2015. There is also reason for the EU to celebrate, Marić said.

"Our accession shows that European integration is continuing despite all the adversities." The decision to join was only a formality, as was the determination of the official exchange rate of 7.5345 kuna per euro.

That was already the course set in July 2020 for Croatia's entry into Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) II, the so-called waiting room of the eurozone.

The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, expressed her delight that Croatia is now becoming the twentieth member of the euro area, just as euro coins and banknotes celebrate their twentieth birthday.

However, euro cash was introduced at the beginning of 2002;

it will be celebrating its 21st birthday on January 1, 2023.

Czech Finance Minister Zbyněk Stanjura, who has held the rotating presidency of the Council of Finance Ministers since the beginning of the month, called the accession a "reasonable political decision" because Croatia meets all the necessary economic criteria.

The Czech Republic itself has not yet introduced the euro.

The head of the Eurogroup, Ireland's finance minister Paschal Donohoe, congratulated the Croats on their "hard work" which made accession possible.

In June, the EU Commission and the ECB determined that the country met all the economic criteria required for membership.