The European Commission is about to present proposals on eurobonds, whereby all euro zone countries guarantee each others debt.

For the moment Berlin remains steadfastly opposed to such an idea.

Euronews’ Rudolf Herbert spoke to Wolfgang Franz, head of the Germany’s Council of Economic Experts, or so called wise men. He also remains vehemently against the plan.

‘‘Eurobonds are nothing else other than a mutual guarantee of member states sovereign debt. Germany’s council of economic experts is completely against this idea.’‘

Franz also said he believed the joint issuing of bonds would seriously undermine the European Central Banks independence.

‘‘At the end of the day it would mean the sovereign debt of each euro zone country would pooled. I want to stress that this would be a deadly sin for the European Central bank to start doing.’‘

In addition, the German economist insisted it was up to individual countries to control their debts.

I’m strongly against the ECB continuing this policy of buying sovereign debt. It started doing this in May 2010. I accepted this with great reluctance because the ECB wanted to buy time for the fiscal policy of member states to take effect. Unfortunately, this has not happened and now it’s up to individual countries to take action.’‘

Franz added that Italy could bring its current economic crisis under control, but only if it was ready to implement reform.