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BERLIN, June 12 (Reuters) - Germany's federal government will likely have to issue around 330 billion euros ($464.2 billion) worth of debt in 2010, Finance Minister Peer Steinbreuck said on Friday.
"In 2010 the federal government will probably have a gross borrowing need of 330 billion euros. It will have to issue bonds in an equivalent order of magnitude," Steinbrueck said in a speech to the Bundesrat upper house of parliament.
Federal debt issuance in Europe's benchmark issuer has been set at 346 billion euros for 2009.
Steinbrueck called for Germany to consolidate its public finances after the economic crisis lest it run the risk of having its credit rating downgraded -- as has happened to euro zone peers such as Spain, Ireland and Greece this year.
"The cost to the federal government, if we go down from a AAA rating to AA+, would be an additional 7 to 8 billion euros," he said.
The German government has agreed twin economic stimulus packages it says are worth a combined 81 billion euros ($114 billion) to counter a recession that this year is shaping up to be the deepest since World War Two.
Weakening the European Union's budget rules could undermine the euro currency, Steinbrueck said in a fresh defence of the bloc's Stability and Growth Pact.
Steinbrueck said some states had called for the pact to be "relativised, loosened, or tunnelled under".
"I wouldn't advise that," he told the Bundesrat. "I wouldn't advise it particularly in view of the related effects on the stability of the currency, that is the euro."
France's economy minister appeared to suggest in a newspaper interview last week that deficit spending directly related to the crisis should be granted a more generous waiver from the deficit limits of the stability pact than is already the case. (Reporting by Dave Graham and Paul Carrel, editing by Mike Peacock)