BRUSSELS () -- European Union finance ministers showed signs of progress Monday toward breaking a deadlock on a new system for ensuring that states in a single currency, planned for 1999, maintain budgetary discipline after joining.


Negotiations on a budget stability pact have been stalled over German demands for stringent rules -- triggering protests that Germany is trying to impose its own tough monetary policies on the rest of the EU.


Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke said Monday that countries that do not participate in the single currency will not be under any obligation to abide by its legal parameters.