(SOFIA) - The government Friday hailed a deal allowing the name of the single European currency to be spelt "evro" in the cyrillic alphabet as a victory for Bulgaria.

"The problem of how to spell the name of the common European currency in cyrillic in the official documents of the EU was solved in Bulgaria's favour," Minister of Public Administration Nikolay Vassilev was quoted as saying by the state BTA news agency.

"We won this battle for about 220 million other people around the world who use the cyrillic alphabet," the minister added.

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in January, is the only country in the 27-nation bloc to use cyrillic, which is the alphabet in other Slavic countries.

The dispute had threatened to scupper an EU accord with Montenegro because Sofia said it would veto that deal accord unless it got its way on the spelling of the euro.

The Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Brussels is the first formal step towards possible EU membership for Montenegro, part of the former Yugosloavia.

The absence of a phonetic equivalent of the letter combination "eu" in their language makes Bulgarians say and write "evro" and not "euro" in cyrillic.

In the same way, "Europe" becomes "Evropa," "euthanasia" becomes "evtanazia" "Eureka" becomes "Evrika" and "eucalyptus" becomes "evkalipt".

Up to now the European Central Bank has insisted that all EU member states should keep the same spelling of the currency.

The bizarre lingustic row was settled earlier this week at meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

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