President Traian Basescu on Monday underscored that Romania affirms its objective of joining the Eurozone, because it cannot afford to be unserious, given that this is one of the objectives it has to achieve under its accession treaty with the European Union, saying that to this end Romania needs a highly performing economy.

'Romania cannot be unserious. In its accession treaty with the European Union, there are two objectives it has to achieve: meeting the requirements for acceding to the Schengen Area, and in this case Romania did meet them. There are currently 26 countries, Romania included, that say Romania has fulfilled the requirements. There is only one European Union member state that still has doubts, the Netherlands, and that for domestic reason. So this is a mandatory objective, namely preparing to join the Schengen Area. Then, the second mandatory objective, which is more difficult, is fulfilling the criteria to join the Eurozone,' Basescu told the TVR public television channel.

He reiterated that meeting the Maastricht criteria for switching over to the European single currency is no longer enough, because reality shows very many countries had met the criteria but they became uncompetitive once they joined the Eurozone because their economies were not highly performing.

Basescu added that Romania is not highly performing when it comes to the state corporations, and that is why all of Romania's programmes with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission are aimed at boosting the performance of such corporations.

'Some of them will be privatised, some will just get private management, and some will sell their minority stakes; one way or another, there must be created the conditions that will change their status as arrears-generating companies,' Basescu explained.

He said that a key area for economic performance is the upgrading and optimisation of the energy system