Invoering euro in Litouwen voorlopig uitgesteld wegens te hoge inflatie (en)

EU finance ministers on Friday clashed over a UK plan for an anti-protectionism taskforce, while Lithuania saw its hopes for 2007 euro membership dashed.

The finance ministers met informally in Vienna on Friday (7 April), amid tensions over protectionism that recently emerged following French, Spanish and Polish attempts to thwart foreign takeovers of their energy and banking firms.

Finance ministers demonstrated broad agreement that "continuing protectionism is one of the reasons for the current levels of unemployment in our countries," said finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser of Austria, which holds the rotating EU presidency.

But ministers clashed over a plan by UK finance minister Gordon Brown to set up a new EU taskforce that should identify sectors that "fail to liberalise," according to press reports.

Mr Brown's call was dismissed by EU monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia i as unnecessary as the European Commission itself is pursuing exactly that task itself.

"The most efficient and respected experts in Europe regarding competition are in the European Commission," Mr Almunia is quoted as saying after the finance ministers meeting.

"Everybody agrees that the commission, in enforcing the competition rules, acts with absolute independence. I think the best thing we can do is support the work of Neelie Kroes i," he added.

Meanwhile, French finance minister Thierry Breton rejected Mr Brown's plan as bureaucratic.

"There are already enough layers of bureaucracy,'" he indicated.

Meanwhile, Slovenia and Lithuania which hope to join the euro currency in 2007 got different signals from finance ministers on their readiness to join on time.

Austria's Mr Grasser said Slovenia has "good chances" to enter the eurozone as planned, adding "If all the criteria are fulfilled they will be the first country to join," according to AP.

But Lithuania, which has high inflation rates, was told that it could not adopt the currency before meeting the eurozone's entry criteria.

Lithuanian prime minister Algirdas Brazauskas said last week that "we are required to be a completely pure" whereas EU states which already adopted the euro, such as France and Germany, were constantly breaking the eurozone's rules.

The president of the eurozone finance ministers, Luxembourg's prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, said "If our Lithuanian friends are putting forward that kind of argumentation, I would strongly advise them to change the argument because this introduces an element of suspicion into the debate."

Estonia also want to join the euro in 2007, but faces high inflation, as well.