Dissolution of Czechoslovakia
On 1 January 2009 Slovakia adopted the Euro as its currency with the exchange rate of 30.126 SK/€, and the €2 commemorative coin for 2009, Slovakia's first, featured the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in remembrance of the common struggle of the Czechoslovak people for democracy. By a quirk of fate, the welcoming speech on the behalf of the European Union on the occasion of Slovakia's entry to the Eurozone was delivered by Mirek Topolánek, the prime minister of the then-EU presiding country, the Czech Republic, naturally in his native language while other guest speakers used English. The Czech Republic continues to use the Czech koruna, or crown.
Karel Kramář
In first months of Czechoslovakia, wages in the cites fell by 60% in real terms owning to inflation and 350, 000 workers, making up 8% of the population were unemployed. Inflation was a major problem in the first months of the new republic, all the more so as Czechoslovakia continued to use the old Habsburg notes in common with other former nations of the Habsburg empire, who printed their notes in abandon, in a sense "exporting" their inflation. In February 1919, a degree ordered that only Habsburg notes stamped with the Czechoslovak lion were legal tender, and in April 1919 the Czechoslovak crown was introduced as the new currency. The February degree largely ended the inflation which was threatening to economically destabilise Czechoslovakia.