EU finance ministers fail to agree on bank closure rules

EU finance ministers early on Saturday broke up their 18-hour meeting without an agreement on bank closure rules. A scheduled news conference was also cancelled. "We ran out of time. It's a very complex issue. At the end of the Presidency we didn't have sufficient time to deal with all the matters of detail. Key issues have not been resolved," Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan told reporters -- Ireland holds the current EU Presidency. He said the finance ministers will meet again on Wednesday to try to reach a deal before the EU summit on Thursday and Friday in Brussels. The ministers could not agree on how much the host country and creditors would have to pay to the cost of shutting a problematic bank. Noonan explained that some EU states which are not members of the euro area want more flexibility because they have no access to the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent fund to help euro zone members during crisis. On his part, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told reporters that "there is a lot of work still to be done. There is lot of uncertainty. We are far away from a solution." Sweden is not a member of the euro zone.