A former official of the European Central Bank (ECB) said Thursday that the European Union (EU) should set up a joint fiscal policymaking mechanism to address its debt problems in the long run.

"People should understand the current design of (European) Union, where you have a monetary union, but no joint fiscal policymaking. This is the weakness of the union to start with," Axel Weber, a former member of the ECB governing council and former president of the German central bank, told a forum here.

Weber, a professor with the University of Chicago, said the fiscal union is about "joint decision-making on expenditure, taxes, unemployment, social security, and other benefit systems that are moving to the European level."

"It's a stable solution (to the debt problems), but it's not around the corner, we are not talking in months or years, but a very very long time," Weber said.

The debt problems in the EU have worsened after its core member countries such as Italy and France felt the pinch of the debt crisis.

"If Germany were the only country left to guarantee the entire debt of all the other members in the union, Germany's debt/GDP ratio would be 320 percent," Weber said. "The ratio after the debt crisis has moved to 84 percent from 64 percent."

Weber said global investors are getting concerned about the future solvency of the troubled European countries, including Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Weber said even if these countries had the same combination of debt and deficit as the United States and Britain, they would be different from the two countries concerning the flexibility in labor market, innovation and technology, which were drivers of future growth in the United States and Britain.

"They (the United States and Britain) have the ability to earn the future income and to consolidate their deficit if they focus on it," Weber said.

"But the countries like Greece, the current program they embark on and the consolidation measures they take are actually leading to a recession in these countries and the recession numbers are quite severe," he added.

EU financial chiefs are set to meet later Friday to negotiate a possible new rescue package on the Greek debt crisis.

"I'm sure there will be more money inflating into the Greece, and European politicians will continue to work positively in that direction," Weber said. "The debt problem in countries like Greece has become the problem of every other member state in the union."

However, Weber said measures like issuing euro bonds is not advisable. "It will bring borrowing cost down again in some of these countries. If that is the case, we will enter in a new phase where there is artificially lowering of government debt pricing and bond pricing in these countries."

"And that will not lead to consolidation and better fiscal behavior that improve a country's fiscal position. Instead, it will lead to more expenditure, create more debt and add higher risk," Weber said.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet