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Euro zone ministers' meetings to become more transparent

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Thursday to make their meetings more transparent by publishing an annotated agenda before the monthly talks and a summary afterwards, the chairman of the meetings said.

The meetings of ministers of the 19 countries now sharing the euro, called the Eurogroup, are informal. Any decisions taken by the ministers need to be formally voted on the next day when ministers of all of the EU's 28 members meet.

They are also more secretive, although key euro zone officials always hold a news conference afterwards.

"We agreed to publish a more detailed agenda and summing-up letters recapitulating conclusions from Eurogroup meetings," said the chairman, Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

He said that ministers also supported publishing documents prepared for the meetings, as long as they were agreed during the talks and did not contain market-sensitive information.

Practical details are to be fine-tuned by deputy finance ministers over the next month.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, editing by Larry King)