Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, on a visit to Brussels yesterday (9 June), came out fighting against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s aspirations to have regular meetings of what he calls “the Eurogroup Council” – the leaders of the 16 eurozone countries. Poland does not want the eurozone leaders given formal status.

Tusk said: “There is no acceptance for creating separate institutions. The [Lisbon] treaty is quite precise.”

The prime minister was visiting the European Council and the European Commission with 14 government ministers, as part of Poland’s preparations for holding the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers in the second half of 2011.

“As a country that is aspiring to join the eurozone, we would like the eurozone to be a leader, but not an exclusive elite within the EU,” Tusk said.

Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, the European affairs minister, said that Poland wanted to be treated as a positive player in the EU and was wary of being excluded from decision-making.

“It is in our interests to be involved in all discussions,” Dowgielewicz said.

He pointed out that, after the UK, Poland is the second-largest EU economy outside the eurozone. Poland has not set an official target date for joining the eurozone, but it is making budget plans that would allow it to qualify for membership in 2015. It was the only one of the EU’s 27 national economies to record positive growth in 2009.

Last month, the Polish government, announced that, together with Sweden, it would contribute to a €440 billion stabilisation fund being set up to help eurozone countries that have sovereign-debt problems. The UK, on the other hand, has said it will not take part.

The crisis talks over sovereign debt and the threat of contagion from Greece to the rest of the eurozone have accelerated the pace of institutional improvisation in the eurozone. The Eurogroup – the meetings of eurozone finance ministers – was given official status only by the Treaty of Lisbon. But the eurozone’s woes have prompted two meetings of eurozone leaders – on 25 March and on 7 May.

The first was a meeting during the course of a regular EU summit – or European Council – attended by all 27 states. The second was specially convened in Brussels as governments sought to put together a convincing rescue package to reassure the financial markets. The only precedent had been a meeting convened in Paris on 12 October 2008 by Sarkozy, at the height of the banking crisis. It was attended by the 16 leaders of the eurozone countries, plus Gordon Brown, the then UK prime minister.

Both the 25 March and 7 May meetings were chaired by Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. Tusk’s comments reflect concern that Van Rompuy shares Sarkozy’s ambition to formalise the Eurogroup summits.

During the ongoing debt crisis, Van Rompuy has been accused of carrying out instructions from Paris and Berlin rather than giving equal weight to the views of all member states.

Tusk said yesterday: “Common standards for everyone [are] the essence of the European Union.”

Up to now, the German government has opposed giving more formal status to the Eurogroup, fearing that France would develop it as a counterweight to the European Central Bank. There were rumours in December that the France wanted Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, to replace Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, as president of the Eurogroup. Lagarde denied making a formal bid for the post, but France has not hidden its desire to boost the weight of the Eurogroup in economic policymaking.

Meanwhile, MEPs have called for more involvement of the European Parliament in discussions about the future role of the Eurogroup.

Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberal ALDE group in the Parliament, said that existing treaty articles offered enough space to bolster the Eurogroup, and economic governance, but he said that the Parliament should have a greater role in the discussions.

Rebecca Harms, co-leader of the Greens/European Free Alliance group, said that she would raise with Van Rompuy concerns over the way member states were giving more powers to the Eurogroup.

“What I dislike most is that this is not transparent,” Harms said.

She said that the Parliament’s political leaders would raise the issue with Juncker at a meeting today (10 June).