The concept of common issuance was first discussed by Member States in the late 1990s, when the Giovannini Group (which has advised the Commission on capital-market developments related to the euro) published a report presenting a range of possible options for co-ordinating the issuance of euro-area sovereign debt 3 . In September 2008, interest in common issuance was revived among market participants, when the European Primary Dealers Association (EPDA) published a discussion paper "A Common European Government Bond" 4 . This paper confirmed that euro-area government bond markets remained highly fragmented almost 10 years after the introduction of the euro and discussed the.
