In theory EU and the Euro area are the same, because the TFEU says so. But in practice it's more complicated than this as Danes negotiated and opt-out clause during the negotiation of the treaty of Maastricht, and even though such clause isn't open to new entrants, in reality nothing prevents negotiations to eventually lead to such an outcome.
The case of Sweden is interesting though, they don't have an opt-out clause so they are obligated to adopt the Euro eventually, but they exploited a loophole by not joining the newest version of European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the 1999, which prevents their entry in the Euro.
Of course, the EU often ignores its own treaties. So that's not a hard guarantee. But the first rule of the EU is that everyone has to pretend it follows its own rules even when it doesn't, so it's not like Icelandic leaders can just announce they'll join the EU but won't adopt the Euro.
> Since the convergence criteria requires participation in ERM II for a minimum of two years, and non-eurozone member states are responsible for deciding when to join ERM II, they can delay their compliance with the criteria by not joining ERM II.
> Denmark has a treaty opt-out from the obligation to join the eurozone even if it complies with all criteria.
This is angels-on-pins level stuff, though. In normal English lax enforcement of a rule doesn't mean you're not required to obey it. It just means you're gambling that you won't be put under sufficient pressure to crack your resolve.
All EU countries have to publicly commit to joining the Euro and doing the work to do so. They are therefore required to join it, under any reasonable interpretation of the treaty language. The fact that some countries realized they could just not do what they agreed to and/or hack their economy to avoid the entry criteria, without any consequences, is good evidence that the treaties are indeed meaningless. But lax enforcement isn't the same as no requirement. The EU Commission could change their stance at any time.
It has been a while since I last looked at this, but from memory a pre-condition for Euro adoption is spending a certain amount of time within some formal "convergence mechanism", however there is no obligation to join that convergence mechanism.
I think you are required to join it, but proceeding to actual Euro rollout requires a currency to be within a certain range for a period of time, and that requires active intervention in currency markets. Governments can just either not do it or claim they can't intervene enough to stay on target.
Because the Icelandic krona is basically universally agreed by everyone to be garbage monopoly money that only stays because of the oligarchs that are in power.
Also, yeah, the Danish Krona is pegged to the euro at ~7.45 so there is little incentive to switch over.
Why? It’s in the EUs interest to not create horror stories about what happens when a country joins. It makes a lot more sense to make Iceland decide on the timeline for adopting the Euro themselves, so the transition is more likely to be smooth. And this is exactly what the policy for adopting the Euro has been.
A shock therapy Euro adoption is not in the interest of anyone.
Edited to remove Sweden because it's obliged to eventually adopt the euro.