Estonia switched smoothly to the euro on 1 January, brushing off worries about a crisis in the currency club which is likely to put off bigger eastern European nations from joining for up to a decade.

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The Baltic state of 1.3 million became the 17th eurozone country at midnight on the New Year and was the first former Soviet state to adopt the euro, capping 20 years of integration with the West. Estonia sees the change as marking the end of its struggles since a 2009 recession lopped 14 percent off its output. It hopes to entice investors by removing fears of devaluation and make borrowing more secure for its people, many of whose mortgages are already in euros from top Nordic banks. Estonia will be the currency club’s poorest member but its debt and deficit levels — the cause of the crisis for some euro zone members — are among the lowest in the bloc. In economic terms, the single currency bloc will barely notice the addition — Estonia’s GDP is 0.2 percent of the euro zone’s 8.9 trillion euros.