The European Commission on Wednesday approved the application of Slovakia to adopt the euro as its currency on Jan. 1, 2009, completing a fast and furious transformation that brought the small country from dictatorship to thriving market economy in less than a decade.

Slovakia will become the 16th country using the euro.

In an annual report on candidates for the euro zone, the commission said that Slovakia fulfilled the criteria laid down in European treaties for joining the euro zone on interest rates, budget deficits and, above all, inflation. Under the formula used to evaluate potential members, Slovakia had to have an inflation rate no higher than 3.2 percent over the past 12 months, a mark it beat by a full percentage point.

No other countries have yet applied for euro membership, but no others would have been accepted if they had. The Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, once the strongest candidates, now appear far from that goal because of high inflation rates. Larger countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic seem equally unlikely to move quickly to adopt the euro.