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International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde urged the 17 eurozone countries Tuesday to integrate further before accepting new members into the currency union, during a conference in the Latvian capital Riga.
In the coming years Lagarde said she hoped the euro "will have expanded beyond the strict monetary currency to become much more of a
fiscal and a financial union as well as being a monetary union."
Latvia, which joined the European Union in 2004, hopes to join the eurozone in 2014.
Closer integration would "give a very strong signal of stability" to financial markets and also reduce exchange rate uncertainty and interest rates for Baltic countries, Lagarde said.
