Poland will not join the planned European Banking Authority in its currently planned configuration, Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said Saturday at the European Union Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus.

"We cannot join something in which we have no voice, but where we would be subject to the decisions of that institution," Rostowski said.

Polish government notes that the current proposal, which would create a banking authority at the ECB, leaves non eurozone members without a voice and only the promise of "close cooperation."

"Of course you can never say never, but what is in the text today is completely unacceptable," he said.

In pending negotiations, Poland is less likely to seek an improvement in potential membership terms for nation's outside the euro-zone and more likely to focus on improving terms for Polish banking security vis-a-vis the new system as a non-member, the minister said.
Netherlands’ and Poland’s Ministers of Finance Jan Cornelis De Jager and Jacek Rostowski