BUDAPEST, March 2 (Reuters) - Hungary could set its target date for adopting the euro by the middle of this year and will continue to seek some easing in the conditions for joining the common currency, Finance Minister Janos Veres said on Monday.
"The target date can be determined sometime in the middle of this year," Veres told public television M1. "The target date can be set in a few months and it's actually desirable and necessary to do this."
Veres added that a condition for setting the date is for parliament to pass the various tax and spending changes proposed by the government last month that aim to keep the budget deficit under 3 percent of the GDP and lower taxes on labour.
Veres also said that Hungary will continue to ask the EU to ease some of the conditions for adopting the euro but will not seek an easing of the Maastricht criteria.
"We don't want to ease the (Maastricht) criteria, we want an easing of the other restrictions which could make accession faster... this could be a shortening of the period a country spends in ERM2," Veres said.
The EU rejected over the weekend the easing of the Maastricht criteria but left the door open on discussion for shortening the two-year waiting period in ERM2, the anteroom to the euro.
Analysts expect Hungary to join ERM2 in 2010 and adopt the
euro in 2013, according to a recent Reuters poll
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Kim Coghill)