The book of Portuguese economist Joao Ferreira "Why We Should Leave the Euro" became a bestseller in Portugal. This is an unprecedented success for the Portuguese market: the book of Ferreira was able to beat by popularity both the traditionally popular books on weight loss and highly popular romance novel "50 Shades of Gray."
There were sold about seven thousand copies of Ferreira’s book. This is a very impressive number for Portugal. The book has already helped to start a debate in the press and on television about alternative ways of overcoming country’s crisis in economics.
Ferreira is convinced that in the context of a strong euro, for Portugal, the hard-hit by the debt crisis, there is no way to take a leap of growth. He calls for the return to the national currency of Portugal - escudo.
Portugal was among the first countries that adopted the euro - it happened in 1999. Then most of the Portuguese approved the government's steps to join the eurozone. Few things have changed after the crisis - according to the survey, in 2012 only 20 percent of Portuguese want to leave the euro area.
During the sustained growth of the EU economy, eurocritics mainly complained about the price increasing due to the introduction of the new currency. Their arguments changed during the crisis – sceptics believe that if the EU countries have their own currencies, they will quickly get out of the recession.
To do this, in their view, it would be necessary to make a devaluation, which would have improved the competitiveness of exports and spurred the economy. At the same time, even critics of the eurozone agree that in the case of devaluation, the welfare of the local population would be much worse for some period of time.
At various times, the rumors about leaving the eurozone have been circulating in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain and Italy. In addition, economists have discussed the possibility of leaving the eurozone for Germany, as it’s the largest and one of the most "healthy" economies of the alliance.
However, the official EU authorities insist on the indivisibility of the euro area. In addition, Europe is not established any mechanism to exit the alliance of a country. This makes a potential leaving of Portugal unpredictable.
