Germany's highest court has rejected two constitutional court cases against the euro - clearing the way for the launch of European Monetary Union (EMU) on January 1,1999.

The defeat of the challenges, filed by several academics opposed to EMU, removes the final obstacle to the euro making its debut as originally scheduled.

The Federal Constitutional Court, sitting in Karlsruhe, rejected the cases unanimously as "clearly unfounded".

The first suit, filed in January by four professors, had urged the court to postpone the euro on the grounds that the currency union was bound to fail because Germany and other prospective members could not meet the strict fiscal criteria, such as reduction of the national debt.

The second suit had been filed by a professor at Mainz University.

The Germany Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who faces elections later this year, has made the euro launch central to his bid for an unprecedented fifth term in office.

But those behind the law suits said that Germany was involved in "creative accounting" - speeding up privatisations and transferring pension funds among other things - in order to raise money to reduce the national debt.

Under the EMU criteria, each member's national debt must be no more than 3% of Gross National Product.

The plaintiffs, who were backed by a petition signed by 155 German economics professors, argued that these "stop-gap measures" were creating unhealthy economies.

The court did not rule on a third suit, filed on Wednesday by Euro-sceptic politician Manfred Brunner, which asked for the euro to be abandoned unless debt-ridden nations such as Italy and Belgium were kept out.

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