The potential costs and benefits concerning Poland’s EMU accession have recently been the focus of renewed attention in an ongoing public debate. On one hand, it is usually argued that floating exchange rates allowed Poland to emerge unscathed from the recent financial crisis due to Polish zloty depreciation. Moreover, it is expected that the main long-run cost of participation in a common currency area will be the loss of independent monetary policy. On the benefits side, it is frequently argued that joining the EMU will bring about increased trade flows. However, recent empirical analyses show that both of these textbook arguments in favor and against the common currency in Poland are incorrect, since many of these expected phenomena have already taken place. Therefore, the article aims to confront these arguments with the empirical facts in the literature on the subject. The reviewed evidence shows that the benefits and costs of joining EMU should be discussed not only as a theoretically expected future, since in fact most of them have been already realized in practice, partly due to the self-fulfilling expectations of Poland’s euron adoption.

The potential costs and benefits concerning Poland’s EMU accession have recently been the focus of renewed attention in an ongoing public debate. On one hand, it is usually argued that floating exchange rates allowed Poland to emerge unscathed from the recent financial crisis due to Polish zloty depreciation. Moreover, it is expected that the main long-run cost of participation in a common currency area will be the loss of independent monetary policy. On the benefits side, it is frequently argued that joining the EMU will bring about increased trade flows. However, recent empirical analyses show that both of these textbook arguments in favor and against the common currency in Poland are incorrect, since many of these expected phenomena have already taken place. Therefore, the article aims to confront these arguments with the empirical facts in the literature on the subject. The reviewed evidence shows that the benefits and costs of joining EMU should be discussed not only as a theoretically expected future, since in fact most of them have been already realized in practice, partly due to the self-fulfilling expectations of Poland’s euron adoption.