After months, perhaps years, of preparation, today is another big day for Malta.
As of midnight, the Maltese lira made way for the euro, which has officially became Malta’s new currency. The Maltese lira can still be used until the end of January and will continue to be exchanged with no extra charges from the commercial banks until the end of March, but as from today our currency is the euro.
This was the logical step after Malta became a member of the European Union nearly four years ago. With Malta now taking up the “European” currency as its own, the transition is complete.
There were some who thought Malta should have waited longer to make this important step. But the country’s progress enabled it to meet with the established criteria within a rather short time and, here we are, with euro notes and coins in our hands.
We have been preparing for this day, and the National Euro Changeover Committee, which was entrusted with the plans to make the transition as smooth as possible, did a good job. Nobody can say that he or she has not come across something related to the changeover, or that the way things will operate as from today have not been explained over and over again.
The NECC did such a good job that it was asked to help Cyprus – which also joined the eurozone last night, an hour ahead of us because of the time zone – in its changeover plans.
The FAIR initiative and the agreements that were reached with a number of enterprises to keep the value of the products and services the same until at least the first three months of this year are just two of the few milestones that were achieved by the committee.
As Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi explained last week, the NECC’s work will not stop now that the changeover has been made. The government has plans to maintain the NECC operative from now onwards too, with a focus on the protection of the consumer. Dr Gonzi said that a law is to be passed in Parliament to transform the committee into an agency that will seek to “make sure that the consumer is treated fairly throughout.”
Yet, of course, the NECC’s task to see the smooth introduction of the euro is not over. If anything, it must oversee that what it has been preaching over the past months will work in practical terms, now that the euro is officially in.
Any change in currency will bring with it some hitches, and we must all be patient before everything settles down. First of all, longer queues, particularly in banks, but not only there, are to be expected in the initial weeks.
With so many people wanting to convert their liras into euros and with consumers paying in liras and getting their change in euros, we are bound to take longer than normal to get our errands done.
What is worrying some shop-owners, for example, is people going to buy a carton of milk and a packet of sweets with a Lm10 note, which would obviously entail the shop-owner having to give more than Lm9 in euros in change. Well, people should refrain from making life more difficult than it already is for the shopkeepers, who are evidently concerned that they will quickly run out of the euro coins they have been given over the past month.
Most of all, those of us who have not yet started thinking in euros should do so. It would be wrong to continue trying to convert euros back into lira in our minds. The faster we learn to appreciate the value of the euro and “forget” the lira, the faster we will get used to the new currency.