Vilnius- European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said in Lithuania on Friday that he would support relaxing the Maastricht criteria governing adoption of the euro to allow recession-hit Eastern European states into the eurozone more quickly. "It is important that we should have an easier way to introduce the euro in some countries," Buzek said in an interview in Vilnius with the Baltic News Service.
"It would be much easier to recover (from recession) and plan an exit from the crisis with the euro," he said.
However, Buzek would not say if he thought there was a realistic chance that the Maastricht would actually be loosened.
Any such move would make it easier for countries such as Lithuania to introduce the pan-European currency without meeting all of the current requirements, which place stringent limits on inflation, interest rates and levels of public debt.
Slovenia and Slovakia are the only former communist countries to have adopted the euro so far.
Lithuania narrowly missed out on meeting all the necessary criteria for adoption of the euro in 2007 because of an inflation rate above the Maastricht threshold.
The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have all expressed a desire to adopt the euro at the earliest opportunity, with Estonia aiming to replace the kroon as the national currency by 2011.
Lithuania has tentatively targeted 2012-13, while Latvia hopes to be ready for 2014.
In Riga on Thursday, the European Commission's Elena Flores ruled out any chance of giving Latvia a fast track to euro adoption.
"The EU is not asking anyone to join the euro as soon as possible," she told delegates at the annual conference of the Latvian central bank.
"The criteria are not going to be loosened for this or any other country," she said.
