European Union finance and economic ministers agreed on Tuesday that an exit strategy should be implemented in 2011 at the latest when recovery is strengthened.

A conclusion document after their meeting said that the ministers noted the "signs of early recovery," the stabilization of financial markets, and the improvement in confidence.

But "the recovery remains fragile and it is not yet time to withdraw the support governments provided to the economy and the financial sector until the recovery is secured," the document said.

"Provided that the (European) Commission forecasts continue to indicate that the recovery is strengthening and becomes self-sustaining, fiscal consolidation in all EU countries should start in 2011 at the latest," said the document.

The European Commission will on Nov. 3 unveil growth forecasts for 2010 and 2011 for every of the 27 EU member nations, EU at aggregate level and the 16-nation euro zone.

But the document added that countries with deep debt level should begin to consolidate its deficit earlier than 2011.

The financial and economic crisis have left some EU countries' fiscal deficit more than four times the EU ceiling of 3 percent of GDP under the Stability and Growth Pact.

The European Commission has urged 20 EU countries, including Greece, France, Britain, Spain and Italy, to cut their budget gaps before a certain deadline.

Greece, with a deficit forecast for this year at 12.5 percent of GDP, had been urged to bring its budget gap down below 3 percent in 2010, but its Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told a news conference that it was totally impossible to do so, pledging that his country would cut the deficit to single digit next year and would take four years to meet the 3 percent ceiling.

The ministers agreed that the planned pace of the fiscal consolidation should be ambitious, and "will have to go well beyond the benchmark of 0.5 percent of GDP per annum in structural terms in most EU member states."

(Xinhua News Agency October 21, 2009)