Incoming EU leader Denmark, Lithuania warn on non-euro bloc

(VILNIUS) - Incoming EU leader Denmark opposes the idea of creating a united front among the 10 member states that lie outside the eurozone, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said Friday.

"I feel at this stage it is not the time and the place for our 10 countries to meet," Thorning-Schmidt said during a visit to Lithuania.

"I firmly believe that we should guard the union of 27," she added, speaking alongside Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite.

Denmark is not in the eurozone, like Poland which hands over the European Union's six-month rotating presidency to Copenhagen in January.

Lithuania is not a member either but hopes to adopt the euro by 2014.

Grybauskaite, the EU's former budget chief, said there was no sense in grouping countries simply because they do not use the euro.

"If it is based only on currency, I don't think that there is any kind of good background for it," she said.

Thorning-Schmidt and Grybauskaite were among the leaders at Wednesday's summit of all 27 EU states, before a separate gathering of the 17 eurozone members came up with a deal to resolve the eurozone debt crisis.

Some non-euro nations, led by Britain, say they are worried that the debt-ravaged bloc may sideline them in taking decisions on the currency which have implications for the whole EU.

There is especially concern that tighter economic and fiscal policy links within the currency bloc could accelerate the development of a "two-speed" Europe to their disadvantage.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country is considered the most eurosceptic in the EU, has been mustering support among other non-euro members to insist that the wider union is kept to the fore.