Europe is not politically ready for “European safe bonds” which would bundle together the sovereign debt instruments of different eurozone countries, Yves Mersch said today (February 10).

Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) executive board, told an audience in Alveslohe, Germany, that “from a purely academic perspective”, European safe bonds – or ESBies – were “certainly an interesting idea”.

He referred to a paper by Markus Brunnermeier et al, published in September 2016 by