BERLIN (MNI) – Germany’s government still opposes the idea of
issuing joint eurobonds to support ailing Eurozone member states, a
government spokesman said Wednesday.
“Nothing has changed on that,” spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a
regular press conference here, pointing to economic and legal reasons.
“Eurobonds would take away any incentive for disciplined
stability-oriented fiscal action,” the spokesman argued. “In our view,
this is something which would cost Europe dearly over the medium to long
term,” he added.
The government will also stick to its rejection of eurobonds at the
upcoming EU summit of heads of state and government next week, Seibert
stressed, citing continued “legal and economic reservations.”
Germany believes that the measures undertaken so far as well as
those already agreed will be sufficient to restore market calm, Seibert
said.
The spokesman reaffirmed that the government was fully backing the
single European currency. “If the euro fails, then Europe will fail,” he
repeated, and “Germany will not allow such a failure,” he vowed.
The sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone will also be a topic at
Friday’s Franco-German government meeting in Freiburg, a town in
southwestern Germany, Seibert said.
The spokesman rejected criticism by Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude
Juncker, who argued, in a newspaper interview published earlier
Wednesday, that Germany had discarded the possibility of eurobonds
without closely studying the proposal.
Seibert, however, stressed that the German government had “very
closely” examined the eurobond proposal. He called on Juncker and fellow
Eurozone leaders to stop the mutual attacks “because markets register
that as disunity.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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