EU Summit ‘won’t discuss euro zone bonds’

This week’s European Union summit will not discuss the issuing of joint euro zone bonds.

So says Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn who added that the idea could be dropped altogether if leaders move more decisively to defend the euro.

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister and Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker has been pushing euro zone bonds but Germany and France oppose them.

Juncker believes the 16-nation currency bloc issuing debt as a single entity would help ease the region’s debt crisis

But Asselborn said if Europe pulled together then the topic need not arise.

“I hope we will never need to talk about euro bonds again,” he said. “If we manage to secure the stability of the euro by making clear decisions this week, and I’m sure that the European union is capable of doing this … then I think we can do it.”

EU leaders meeting in Brussels this week aim to set out changes to the bloc’s treaty and agree on a permanent mechanism for defending the euro against financial upheavals.

In an interview with German radio station Deutschlandfunk, Asselborn said Europe’s major powers needed to show solidarity with smaller nations and urged the EU to present a unified front at the summit in order to reassure markets.

“We have a euro crisis and we have to deal with this crisis together. We need to approach it as Europeans, not nationally,” he said, noting there was no alternative to defending the euro.

Asselborn said half of Germany’s exports were to its EU partners. “That would never be possible if there was no euro and no internal market,” he added.

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