Around 2,000 delegates and journalists were expected to join EU finance ministers at the two-day meeting of the EBRD -- the bank created in 1991 to assist the transition of former communist nations to market economies.

After a series of themed sessions on Sunday, the bank's board of governors representing its 62 shareholder governments and institutions, were Monday to set out their objectives for 2005 under the chairmanship of Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.

Besides deciding on the bank's future direction, European finance ministers had been expected to settle on their candidate to head the IMF.

But according to rumours circulating on the sidelines at the start of the EBRD meeting, favourite Jean Lemierre, the current EBRD head, was not expected to succeed Germany's Horst Koehler as IMF managing director.

Earlier this month in Ireland, EU finance ministers agreed to choose between outgoing Spanish Finance Minister Rodrigo Rato and Frenchman Lemierre to succeed Koehler.

By tradition the head of the IMF is a European while the top job at the World Bank, the IMF's sister institution, goes to an American.

Focus was equally expected to be on the European Union's historic enlargement.

The bloc's membership will rise to 25 countries on May 1, when 10 mostly former communist nations join.

Eight of the new members -- Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- are among 27 countries in which the EBRD operates.