German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (R) and French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire (L) give a press conference after a Eurogroup meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on November 19, 2018 | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images France and Germany eye eurozone budget by 2021 Bruno Le Maire and Olaf Scholz set out their plans to ‘promote greater convergence.’

The eurozone should have its own budget in place by 2021 with financial firepower to absorb economic shocks, said the French and German finance ministers on Monday.

France’s Bruno Le Maire and Germany’s Olaf Scholz expressed their hopes for a joint Franco-German proposal on the eurozone budget to their peers in Brussels during an extraordinary Eurogroup meeting of all 27 EU finance ministers.

“We want to enter [the budget] into force by 2021,” Le Maire told reporters after the meeting. The budget would help “promote greater convergence” and “have a stabilization function” that can absorb sudden economic shocks, he added.

The eurozone pot would be specific to the countries with the single currency but exist within the framework of the EU budget.

Some countries, however, still need some convincing on the proposal, Scholz admitted.

“Some were asking questions like, ‘what is the added value?’” the German said. But “in the end, [we'll] find a solution that will be supported by all the others.”

Prior to the Eurogroup, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said, “the need for such a budget is less than convincing.”

When questioned about the Dutch comment, Le Maire said he had invited Hoekstra to "discuss [the proposal] further.”

Today’s gathering was in preparation for the next Eurogroup meeting in two weeks’ time. Finance ministers are then set to agree on what economic safeguards they’re willing to introduce for the single currency bloc.

Eurozone heads of state will make the final decision at a summit in mid-December.