Saying that joint EU debt already exists doesn’t really address the argument. The issue is not whether the EU has ever issued shared debt before. It is about whether member states are actually willing to expand that model in a politically sensitive area where the financial burden is uneven.

Germany is not objecting out of confusion about past instruments. It is objecting because a broader program of joint debt would place more longterm financial exposure on Germany, and it does not want to carry that load. Other countries support the idea precisely because it would distribute that cost more widely. That conflict keeps resurfacing every time the topic comes up.

You could just as easily point to other examples that show the same thing. Spain isn’t eager to pour money into the defense of Eastern Europe because it doesn’t feel the Russian threat the same way. And plenty of countries in Central and Eastern Europe push back hard when it comes to sharing the burden on migration, because they see that as a Southern European problem.