Or in other words, people are much more likely to leave the country if Lithuania adopts the euro, and they did, so there you have it.
It has been only 2 weeks since we adopted the euro and I haven't notices any mass emigration...
Lithuania got screwed :P when you use the euro, the prices tends to be similar to the european countries (when these countries get way more salary than the lithuanians...).
Have you heard of a thing called global market? Current rise in prices after adopting the euro was very small.
Anyway Lithuania was basically using the euro (in the form of a national currency with a fixed exchange rating) for the past 10 year or so. Before that you could say we had the US dollar (also a fixed exchange rating for 10 years). So since gaining independence in 1990 we didn't have an independent monetary policy. Now we can influence it by at least a bit and the benefits (cheaper loans, no taxes for currency exchange, geopolitical security, etc.) greatly outweigh the drawbacks (insignificant rise in prices).
Edited 1/14/2015 11:15:21