From 1 January 2023 Croatia uses the euro as well. With its entry the euro area reaches twenty countries: it is the first accession since Lithuania in 2015 and makes Croatia, at that moment, the most recent state in which euro banknotes become official money.
The Europa series, in circulation today, is the money Croatia adopts in 2023.
The Croatian kuna is replaced at the fixed rate of 7.53450 kuna to one euro. As in the earlier changeovers, a dual-circulation period is provided for, during which kuna and euro coexist to guide citizens and retailers through the switch.
Hrvatska narodna banka, the Croatian central bank, joins the Eurosystem. The banknotes Croatians start to use are those of the Europa series, identical to those of the other countries: what changes is the area of use, not the design.
This is one of the clearest examples of how mature the euro project has become. Croatia does not enter a system still being built from scratch, nor a cash family still waiting to be completed: it joins a fully established circulation environment in which the current production series already runs from 5 to 200 euro.
The accession had been decided by the Council of the European Union on 12 July 2022, after the convergence criteria were assessed. Croatia thus becomes the twentieth member of the area, after eight years without new entries.
That also means Croatia experiences the euro differently from Slovenia, Slovakia or Estonia. Those countries joined during the first-series phase; Croatia joins after the long Europa-series rollout and after the end of issuance of the 500 euro. The common banknotes are the same everywhere, but the historical stage of the currency is no longer the same.
On the coin side, Croatia introduces its own national faces, but on the banknote side there is no Croatian version to learn. The same supranational design continues to circulate, confirming once again that euro banknotes expand territorially without becoming nationally customised.
For anyone watching circulation, 2023 confirms a now well-established rule: every new country adopts the existing banknotes, without changing their design, and the euro keeps widening its map one member at a time.
