Comments by German economy minister, Peter Altmaier
- Can't see any damage from Germany's coronabonds stance
- German priority is to protect euro area stability
The debate continues to rage on ahead of the Eurogroup meeting today, but at the end the details are going to matter more than the headlines.
A "deal" isn't really a deal if they don't properly outline what measures will be deployed.
The big issue yesterday is that the draft agreement pushed by the rest of the bloc makes a mention to "innovative financial instrument" but Italy has rejected that in saying that they want an explicit mention that the bloc is referring to coronabonds instead.
Meanwhile, Italy is also demanding no conditionality for ESM loans but the Netherlands insisted that such an option should not be allowed i.e. they want "phased conditionality".
