SAARISELKAEAE, Finland: Despite the mounting debt crisis in bankruptcy-threatened Cyprus, small EU and applicant countries yesterday said they still believed in greater European integration and the euro.
“We are sticking to our plan to join the eurozone on January 1, 2014,” Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said on the sidelines of an informal retreat in Finnish Lapland hosted by Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen to discuss the future of Europe.
Dombrovskis said that Europe had seen its way out of other tough spots in the past, citing crises in the past decade in Germany, eastern Europe and now in southern Europe.
“There are crises and problems, there are also solutions for those problems,” he said.
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, whose country is set to join the EU in July, said his country saw its future membership in the context of its history.
“We paid a heavy price to be an EU member and having statehood, and we had a war,” he said.
Ireland, one of the eurozone countries hit hardest by the euro crisis, meanwhile said it nonetheless sees the single currency as a good thing for the country’s economy. “Being part of the currency union has made us a much more attractive destination for foreign direct investments,” Irish Minister of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton said.
Meanwhile, Turkey, whose efforts to join the 27-member bloc have stalled in recent years, said it saw its own membership as part of the solution to Europe’s economic woes.AFP
