Eurogroup in July 2018 on its desire to participate in ERM II, and commitment to enter into a "close cooperation" agreement with the Banking Union. In January 2019, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said he hoped that Bulgaria could join the ERM-II mechanism in July, and introduce the euro on 1 January 2022. However, this deadline was put back to July 2019 due to extra conditions requested by Eurozone governments, namely that Bulgaria: Join the banking union at the same time as ERM (meaning Bulgaria's banks must first pass stress-tests). Reinforce supervision of the non-bank financial sector and fully implement EU anti money-laundering rules. Thoroughly implement the reforms from the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM). While the CVM reforms are mentioned, and progress in judicial reform and organised crime is expected, leaving the CVM is not a precondition. As of October 2019, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov's target was to enter the ERM II by April 2020. In January 2020, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that it was possible for Bulgaria to join ERM II later in 2020 and adopt the euro in 2023 at first. Borisov stated in February that Bulgaria's application would be reviewed in July. In March the Bulgarian central bank said that this target was no longer realistic due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, in April Borisov stated that he would push forward the application by the end of April. The reason he gave for this U-turn was the 500 billion euros rescue package to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, which the finance ministers of the Eurogroup had agreed upon on 10 April. On 24 April, Fitch Ratings announced that they would probably upgrade Bulgaria's Foreign-Currency IDR by two notches between Bulgaria's accession to ERM II and euro adoption: "… Given that the COVID-19 pandemic response is taking up significant resources with regard to political engagement at the EU-wide level, facilitating the Bulgarian lev's ERM2 accession may decline as a relative priority for European institutions. If concerns about risks ease and the process resumes, this would be supportive of the rating, as underlined by our view that all things being equal, we would upgrade Bulgaria's Long-Term Foreign-Currency IDR by two notches between admission to the ERM II and joining the euro." On 30 April 2020, Bulgaria officially submitted documents to the European Central Bank to apply to join ERM II, the first