Are the previous court decisions ruling that the European Court of Justice can have primacy over national law in Germany. It’s also “incomprehensible” that it took so long for everybody to figure this out. I sure hope that this latest ruling won’t be ruled out as “meaningless” later but I’ve had my hopes dashed before.
Germany’s constitutional court sent shockwaves through Europe last week by ruling that the German government and the EU’s top judges failed to properly scrutinise the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme.
The judgment threatens to turn the European Commission against Germany, the EU’s biggest member state. It raises doubts over the primacy of the European Court of Justice over national law. It also risks driving a wedge between the ECB and its biggest shareholder, the Bundesbank.
Germany’s highest court dismissed an earlier ECJ ruling in ECB’s favour as “incomprehensible” and “meaningless”. That bombshell decision opened the door to potential legal challenges against the EU from other countries, such as Poland and Hungary, whose authoritarian governments are already at odds with Brussels.
Imagine that. A nation state (member state) ought to have a say in how its money is spent. What a radical new concept.
Germany’s top court has ruled that the European Central Bank’s mass bond-buying to stabilise the eurozone partly violates the German constitution.
The ruling relates to government debt worth €2.1 trillion (£2tn; $2.3tn) bought by the ECB since 2015, but not purchases in the coronavirus crisis.
The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe says there is not enough German political oversight in the purchases…
The plaintiffs are a group of German academics, including a former leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Bernd Lucke. They argue that the purchases violate the EU ban on one eurozone member subsidising the debts of another.
It is now up to the ECB to explain how its mass bond-buying programme is “proportionate”. The Bundesbank could pull out if it is not satisfied, in three months’ time – which would be a big blow to the eurozone.
No, wait. Germany has decided its gold is safe in American hands (I knew it was one of those).
Surging mistrust of the euro during Europe’s debt crisis fed a campaign to bring Germany’s entire $141 billion gold reserve home from New York and London. Now, after politics shifted in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition, the government has concluded that stashing half its bullion abroad is prudent after all.
“The Americans are taking good care of our gold… It’s my view that the gold reserves should be stored wherever they might be needed in an emergency.”
Strange. Stored abroad since the Cold War in case of a Soviet invasion, nearly half of Germany’s gold reserves are stored in the United States.
Stranger still: The Bundesbank or other independent auditors have never actually physically checked the gold’s authenticity or weight but have relied on “written confirmations by the storage sites” instead.
Now folks are starting to, you know, wonder (paranoia runs deep)? Hey, central banking at its best is all I can say. It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s just that we don’t trust you.
“Ein Teil der Diskussion in Deutschland ist schon einigermaßen grotesk.”
Withdrawal, I am told, can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications and recreational drugs.
In order to experience the symptoms of withdrawal, one must have first developed a physical/mental dependence (often referred to as chemical dependency).
Big spending Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank boss who is shooting for the outright central-bank purchase of European sovereign debt, or lonely Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann (and pretty much the rest of conservative Germany) who is gunning to resist such a move as it would “dilute debt-laden governments’ incentive to reform, and lumber the central bank with too many risks and responsibilities, endangering its independence and credibility.”
And more importantly, who is Grace Kelly here and where is she when we need her?
“I will do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.”
Observing Hermann 