They don't want to give up the stick

Something odd about this article in the FT, not for the content but for what seems to be missing:

Poland may postpone by at least a year its plans to adopt the euro in 2012, amid signs of a worsening economy and budget deficit, the country's finance minister has told the Financial Times.

"The first of January 2012 is still realistic, but it may require some delay," Jacek Rostowski said. "The world crisis has come along and it would be naive to pretend it has had no effect ... If we move it by one year that's not the end of the world."

The article goes here and there but never addresses what is probably the real reason for Poland not joining. There is this to give a clue:

The criteria for joining the euro call for a deficit of no more than 3 per cent, which would make joining the euro by 2012 unrealistic. In order to meet that date, Poland would have to join the pre-euro ERM-2 trading mechanism this year, which Krzysztof Rybinski, an economist with Ernst & Young, said is unlikely.

Given the colourful history of current euro countries in "adhering" to the 3 percent deficit rule laid out in the Growth and Stability Pact, we can readily dismiss that as a reason for the Poles not being "ready" in 2012. However, joining ERM-2 and having to begin the process of surrendering Polish monetary policy, now we get much closer to the real reason for the Poles wavering.