The financial crisis puts the EU countries not belonging to the euro area in a position that makes them think about speeding up the adoption of the single currency as a "shelter" solution. However, their attempts are crashing onto a wall: the Maastricht criteria, which are designed to ensure that all economies are subject to the same rules before adopting the euro.

But countries that are, at this point, in the euro area should take into consideration the lowering of these criteria - the benefits beyond providing shelter are more important than the risks involved in lowering the conditions of admission.

First, we have to take into consideration the reasons for which a country gets to be vulnerable under the pressure of the financial crisis. Four is the number of characteristics that seem to make an economy risky: its own currency; a relatively small size; the banking system exposed to international pressures; a public budget too weak to absorb the pressures that challenge the banking system. These criteria clearly suggest that even Denmark and Sweden are vulnerable. As well as Britain, although the size of its economy and the status of the sterling, although much faded, as a reserve currency seems to show certain nuances.

The same characteristics are obvious - even more significantly - in the case of the new Member States, only two of which - Slovenia and Slovakia - have managed to enter the shelter provided by the euro-zone before their economies felt the crisis. The public finances quality of these new Member States varies, but all their savings are low, their financial markets are thin, and their banking sectors are exposed, a crucial economic feature and a complicated one from the political point of view. The magnitude of this combination is reflected by the unprecedented move of the Central European Bank (CEB) to leave its