It's totally unclear and for some reason I seriously doubt governments are lending to other governments and borrowing at the same time.
It would be easy to line the numbers up against reality to find out if this is private debt, public-to-private debt etc. (which I suspect it is), or some kind of public-to-public debt (which I doubt).
Also, all debt is not equal, the loans are on different terms with different amount of risk, so it's the value of the current bonds and market prices that need to be compared, not their face value.
> I seriously doubt governments are lending to other governments and borrowing at the same time
TARGET2 balances are bilateral and cumulative [1]. But they aren’t really debts intended to be paid back, and more an EU payments system accounting side effect. (When Greece threatened exiting the Euro, calling these balances did come into question [2].)
To me, TARGET2 is a politically acceptable way for rich euro countries (Germany) to transfer money to the poor ones (Greece), in exchange for the poor ones accepting the fact that the rich countries deciding EU policies.
