The Central European currencies slightly strengthened against the euro on Tuesday. The forint posted the largest gains (0.4 %) when the EUR/HUF pair breached a support at EUR/HUF 309.0 to hit a five-day high. Once again, the currencies ignored changes proceeding in Ukraine (unlike the hryvnia that hit the new all-time low against both the dollar and the euro) as well as rising political tensions in Romania. In Bucharest, a junior government party, National-Liberals, decided to leave the coalition with senior Social-Democrats yesterday, mainly due
to disagreement with government’s personal policy. Meanwhile, the zloty gained about 0.1 % and the marginally strengthening koruna approached a three month high.
Regarding fresh labour market data in Hungary, the average unemployment rate for the three months to January dropped to a five-year low of 8.9 % (rather than to rise to expected 9.3%). Despite delivering a positive surprise, the reading has had no immediate impact on the forint. As for the rest of this week, the only regional market-mover in the pipeline has been details of the Polish GDP growth in the fourth quarter 2013 to be released on Friday.