Euro bonds would cost Germany billions: magazine

BERLIN: Issuing joint euro bonds would cost Germany billions of euros each year, according to finance ministry experts cited in a magazine on Saturday.

"In the first year it would mean 2.5 billion euros of additional interest rate costs for Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's budget, in the second year the costs would be twice that," Der Spiegel magazine wrote in a statement ahead of the release.

In the tenth year, the additional cost would be between 20-25 billion euros, according to finance ministry calculations, Der Spiegel said.

The calculations were based on euro bonds with 0.8 percentage points higher interest rates than for German sovereign bonds, the magazine said, in line with bonds the European Central Bank currently sells to finance its part in the euro zone bailout scheme.

Germany has led resistance to calls that the euro currency bloc should issue common euro bonds and expand its bailout fund to calm repeated market sellofs of government bonds and bank shares of vulnerable debtor countries.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday reiterated her criticism of proposals for euro zone bonds, saying this was a "slippery slope" that would probably leave everyone worse off.

Schaeuble also rebuffed the idea at his ministry's open day on Saturday, saying Europe could not have uniform interest rates on its debt unless its fiscal policy was also made collectively.

Copyright Reuters, 2011