Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that she expects an honest assessment of the financial situation within Eastern Europe at a European Union (EU) summit meeting this weekend.

Merkel said that, as far as the EU member states are concerned, "we should be given an honest status of the situation," adding that this was not necessarily the case at the EU's December's summit.

The heads of all 27 EU member states are due to meet in Brussels Sunday for an extraordinary summit convened to discuss the global economic crisis.

In December, the German chancellor said, "many Eastern European states said they didn't have a banking crisis." Merkel said she had warned at the time that eastern Europe would not remain untouched by the global economic downturn.

The crisis in Central and Eastern Europe is now threatening to undercut the gains achieved through the region's economic transformation from communism over the last 20 years.

Asked, at a briefing with foreign journalists, what help Germany could offer Eastern European economies, Merkel said, "the biggest form of solidarity, which has proven itself in this crisis, is the existence of the euro."

She added that Germany was in a precarious situation with regards to its eastern neighbours. "If we help too much, we're accused of being too forceful, but if we do too little it's not right either," the chancellor said.

"The time phase within which we can do the right thing is, at best, nano-seconds long," Merkel added. (dpa)