Maltese revellers last night bid farewell to 2007 and the Maltese lira while they ushered in 2008 and a new currency – before a backdrop of fireworks and entertainment organised from Valletta to Paola to Victoria.

Years of fiscal diligence and austerity measures paid off last night as Malta officially adopted the euro as its official currency, bringing, with the tandem euro adoption in Cyprus, the number of countries claiming the euro as their national currency to 15.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who as finance minister along with parliamentary secretary Tonio Fenech, has been hard at work ensuring Malta met the demandingly stringent Maastricht Criteria for eurozone membership, and marked the occasion in a symbolic way last night.

A few minutes past midnight Dr Gonzi made the ceremonial first euro withdrawal from an ATM at the Valletta Waterfront. He was followed by Central Bank of Malta Governor Michael C. Bonello, Mr Fenech and the National Euro Changeover Committee’s Joseph F.X. Zahra and Alan Camilleri.

A night of outdoors concerts had been planned for Valletta yesterday night but inclement weather forecast prompted organisers in the late morning to transfer musical entertainment indoors to the Mediterranean Conference Centre and St James Cavalier.

Over the course of January, Malta will go through a one-month dual circulation period, meaning that consumers will be able to pay for goods in either the Maltese lira or euros, but change will only be given in euros. The dual display of prices, meanwhile, will continue until the end of June.

Now that the dual circulation period has begun, commercial banks will exchange Maltese liri for euros at no charge for three months until the end of March. Furthermore, the Central Bank will exchange leftover Maltese liri notes for euros for 10 years after the changeover, while it will also exchange Maltese coins for two years.

The NECC yesterday issued a range of guidelines for the general public on how to best deal with the changeover, for many the second changeover of their lifetimes after the Maltese lira replaced the sterling currency in 1972.

The public was advised to begin handling and paying with euros from day one, today, but those with larger amounts of legacy currency to be changed to euros should wait until after the first week of the changeover to pass until doing so. Those consumers paying in the Maltese lira are advised to try to pay in exact change, or as close as possible, and to carry with them the BOV converter or an exchange rate card.

The NECC also stressed consumers should not only use shops to exchange their Maltese currency and pointed out that banks would be open from tomorrow to exchange currency, while ATMs would also be dispensing euros.

Additionally, the NECC added, no business will be able to refuse payments in Maltese liri until the end of January but added that if and when possible, consumers should pay by cheque or credit and debit cards to simplify matters for themselves and others.

The NECC’s 154 Linja Ewro will be operable throughout the changeover process, including today.

A total of close to 41.51 million euro banknotes (worth e799 million – Lm343.01 million) and some 140 million euro coins worth e39.29 million (Lm16.87 million) were required to replace the outgoing Maltese lira. The Central Bank of Malta borrowed the necessary volumes of euro banknotes from the Banca d’Italia, while the Maltese euro coins were produced by the Monnaie de Paris and arrived in Malta between mid-September and the end of October.

As far as the changeover of automated tellers machines (ATMs) is concerned, about 60 per cent of Malta’s 154 ATMs – which typically handle 306,000 withdrawals per week with an average value of e26.55 million (Lm11.4 million) – were to dispensing low denomination banknotes, mainly e10 (Lm4.29) and e20 (Lm8.59), at midnight.

By noon today between 85 and 90 per cent of ATMs are expected to be issuing euros, while the remaining ATMs are to begin dispensing euros by 4pm. ATMs went offline yesterday night at 10pm until the respective machines were scheduled to begin operating again – at midnight, 10am or 4pm today.

Branches themselves, meanwhile, will be closed today and will reopen tomorrow and Wednesday but will only handle over-the-counter business for cash deposits, foreign currency exchange and exchanges into euro. On 4 and 5 January normal banking hours will be extended until 4pm. During the extended opening hours branches will only deal with cash deposits, foreign currency exchange and exchanges into euro.

The 12 countries that have joined the EU since 2004 are obliged to eventually join the euro. Slovenia was the first to meet the targets and joined on 1 January 2007. Of the nine remaining countries, only four have linked their currencies to the euro in an exchange rate trading band, a key step toward membership.

The new members have set targets to join between 2009 and 2014.

Current members of the euro zone are Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Slovenia.

New EU members Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have joined the exchange rate mechanism but others – Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania – have considerably further to go.