Eurozone ministers reject fast-track euro entry

(BRUSSELS) - Finance ministers from the 16 countries sharing the euro on Monday rejected easing conditions for joining the bloc to allow for fast-track accession, their chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said.

"This is not the moment to start a new debate about the criteria" for joining the eurozone, Juncker told journalists after chairing a meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

Juncker, who is Luxembourg's finance minister and premier, added that "there's no question of changing" the rules for joining or how long a country must wait before being deemed worthy of adopting the shared European currency.

At a summit on March 1, several eurozone leaders opened the door for the first time to the possibility of fast-track membership of the eurozone, while ruling out a relaxation of the tough rules for adopting the currency.

Until then, procedures for adopting the euro had been treated as sacrosanct and tweaking them had been firmly out of question.

However, with eastern European countries casting around for an anchor of stability amid the financial crisis, Hungary and Poland have floated the idea of fast-track membership.

EU countries aspiring to adopt the euro usually have to respect five tough economic criteria, requiring them to keep their deficits and debt down, their currencies stable, long-term interest rates in line with targets and inflation under control in a sustainable way.

The rules specifically require euro hopeful countries to keep their currency's exchange rate from fluctuating more than 15 percent against the euro over at least two years.

So far, Slovenia and Slovakia are the only former communist members of the 27-nation European Union to have also met all the criteria for adopting the euro.

EU leaders rejected a Hungarian plea at the March 1 summit for plans for a regional package to help eastern European nations cope with an increasingly dire economic and financial crisis, opting instead to help on a case-by-case basis.

The EU has a 25-billion-euro (31-billion-dollar) standing credit facility available for non-euro members of the 27-nation bloc, which Hungary and Latvia tapped last year and which Romania said on Monday it hoped to draw on.

EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that the credit facility should be enough to meet Romania's needs and that if more was needed in the future for other countries, the resources would be found.

"For the moment, we have more than enough resources to finance a European contribution in the case of Romania," he said.

"I hope that there's not reason to have to go above the current limits, but if it's the case that it's necessary to go beyond what's possible now, I'm sure that the member states would agree," Almunia added.