Lithuania still committed to joining the euro in 2015

Two reports to be published in June to assess country’s candidacy.

Lithuania has restated its intention to join the euro on 1 January 2015, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and the Eurogroup’s president, said tonight (27 January) at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

Lithuania is still “very determined” to join the eurozone, despite the deep slump experienced by the currency bloc since 2009, he said.

In doing so it would follow in the footsteps of its Baltic neighbours Estonia, which joined the eurozone in 2011, and Latvia which joined this month.  

But Dijsselbloem did not give the country’s candidacy his full backing. It was “too early to tell” whether the Baltic republic of just under 3 million people would meet the criteria for joining the eurozone, he said.

Lithuania’s progress will be the subject of convergence reports to be published in June by the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB).  

Dijsselbloem said Latvia’s recent transition to the euro had been a “smooth changeover” and that economic developments in the country were “encouraging”.  As a eurozone member, Latvia is expected to contribute to the eurozone bail-out fund. The country’s parliament will vote later this week to approve Latvia’s adherence to the bail-out fund at a cost of €1.9 billion.  

Greece bail-out 

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The Eurogroup’s president expressed regret that negotiations with Greece on the economic reforms the Greek government should take to meet the terms of its bail-out had not progressed further.  Eurozone member states, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), granted Greece a €240 billion bail-out, part of it in May 2010 and part of it in March 2012, in exchange for Greece committing to a programme of tough austerity policies and structural reforms. 

“I am sorry to say that the review has not been completed”, he said, adding that Greece needed “further work” before the troika – an ad hoc group of officials from the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF that monitors Greece’s compliance with the austerity programme – could return to Athens to complete its “review” of the government’s implementation of the conditions.  

Dijsselbloem indicated that the Eurogroup would not chance its stance towards Greece until the latter had received a position review from the troika, regardless of the forthcoming European Parliament elections and rising euroscepticism in the country. 

Pierre Moscovici, France’s finance minister, struck a more conciliatory tone saying that the Eurogroup had reiterated its desire for the views of the Greek government and the troika to “converge”. 

The Greek government, which assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union’s Council of Ministers on 1 January, has become increasingly outspoken in its criticism of how its international bail-out has been managed.