Proposals to significantly reduce social and economic tensions in individual EU member states and enhance the ECB’s macro-economic stabilization capacities
by creating Eurobonds have been rejected inter alia by the German
government. Eurobonds would allow Southern European nations to reduce
their debt burden and refinance at rates available to the northern EU neighbors. The policy battle over Eurobonds is typically framed as a conflict between poor Southern European states and rich northern European states unwilling to socialize debt. Little attention has been paid to other interests at play in the debate over Eurobonds. This paper examines whether government policies are simply driven by old fashioned austerity ideas, and focuses in particular on the discursive battle over proposals made by a number of influential think tanks around Eurobonds, expanding the analysis beyond northern European state interests to analyse the material and ideological stakes in play in this policy field.
