(Bloomberg) -- German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said he’s opposed to a new round of joint debt issuance by the European Union because member states should take responsibility for their own finances. 

Lindner is trying to shut down discussion of another joint borrowing initiative as EU members look to finance the energy transition, the shift to a digital economy and, most urgently, a revamp of their militaries to confront Russia’s threat to their eastern borders. 

The German finance chief was speaking on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington where some of his counterparts were advancing the case for joint debt issuance as the best way to raise the billions of euros required. 

Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said such a move was a “no-brainer” while Poland’s Andrzej Domanski said his country will push for new and more equitable financing for defense when it takes over the bloc’s rotating presidency next year. Lindner reiterated that he won’t accept more joint liabilities. 

“For economic reasons, responsibility for our own national finances should not be blurred,” he said in comments to Bloomberg. 

German officials have been pointing to their constitutional court’s stricter interpretation of the legal limits to government borrowing as a major hurdle to any new EU program. Last year the court in Karlsruhe struck down the practice of shifting funds between off-budget vehicles that had been designed to get around the country’s borrowing restrictions. 

“If there’s will there will be a legal way, not only for Germany but for many others,” Spain’s Cuerpo said.

But Lindner insisted that it’s not just a question of getting around the court. “We are not against the debt union for legal reasons alone,” he said. 

Furthermore, he argued that the results of the EU’s €800 billion ($850 billion) pandemic recovery fund — part of the bloc’s biggest stimulus package ever — were mixed and it is therefore not an approach that should be repeated. 

“The outcome of the Next Generation EU fund is so ambivalent that a repetition does not seem advisable,” he said. 

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