Agnes Csermely, a prominent economist associated with the Hungarian National Bank, believes that despite the rush towards euro zone membership, Hungary would be well advised to delay this process until the government manages to introduce deep, structural changes to the country’s labour market and successfully decreases the national debt.

As Slovakia prepares to adopt the common European currency within three weeks, some in Hungary are pushing the government to speed up the drive towards monetary union as well. In fact, Hungary will likely meet some of the key criteria required to join the euro zone next year, when inflation levels will fall below 3 percent and when the Hungarian national deficit will drop to only 2.6 percent of the GDP.

This marks a stunning improvement over figures from only two years ago, when the deficit stood closer to a record breaking 10 percent.

But Hungary still has to work on reducing its debt, which is now 72 percent of the GDP and it must also streamline and make more flexible its labour market.

One of Hungary’s major problems is that a large number of citizens are working under the table and are not registered by their employers, mainly due to the extra costs that companies must bear if they officially register their workers.

Unemployment figures must also drop before Hungary can take the next major step in its road towards euro adoption, namely the entry into the ERM-2 phase, at which point the Hungarian forint’s value would be pegged closely to the common European currency.