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A German welcomed the decision from Germany in particular: EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter that the Federal Constitutional Court had barely rejected the urgent application against the 750 billion euro Corona reconstruction fund: "The EU remains on course with the economic recovery after this unprecedented pandemic. "

Other reactions from Brussels also show that the discussion about permanent borrowing does not end with the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. "Now we urgently need to reform the EU treaties so that European fiscal policy is not only possible in times of crisis," says Damian Boeselager, who was elected to the European Parliament for the Volt party and is a member of the Greens.

In the past few months there have already been numerous requests to speak in favor of establishing joint debt as an integral part of the European Union.

Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), called in October to make the Corona Recovery Fund a permanent institution.

David Sassoli, President of the European Parliament, repeated this request in November.

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Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) is one of the biggest supporters in this country.

Weeks ago in the Bundestag he made it clear how he sees the reconstruction fund: as an important step on the way to a fiscal union.

It is precisely such statements that startle some people in this country and lead to complaints.

It was an alliance around Bernd Lucke, once AfD and now part of the LKR (Liberal-Conservative Reformer) party, that wanted to stop the reconstruction fund by means of an urgent motion.

The court will now deal in detail with the actual constitutional complaint of the plaintiff at a later date in main proceedings (Az. 2 BvR 547/21).

An organ complaint by the AfD parliamentary group has also been before the judges in Karlsruhe since Easter.

"Blatant breach of contract"?

Luckes “Bündnis Bürgerwille”, which according to its own information consists of more than 2,200 supporters, considers above all the common indebtedness to be inadmissible.

This is a "blatant breach of contract", the EU treaties would forbid joint borrowing.

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The judges of the Second Senate have not yet decided how they will see the matter.

The outcome is open.

However, they do not see a high probability of a constitutional violation "in the case of a summary examination" in the urgent procedure.

The amount, duration and purpose of the funds to be borrowed by the EU Commission are limited, according to the court's notification.

The same applies to Germany's possible liability.

That is why Germany is now allowed to bring the fund on its way.

A delayed start could have irreversible consequences, the court said.

The federal government also feared "considerable foreign and European policy distortions".

The first money should flow in July.

It is unclear what the Karlsruhe decision means for the content-related, but more extensive and formally different action of the AfD parliamentary group.

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On April 3, the latter had filed a complaint against the EU's own funds decision and also made an urgent motion to prevent Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier from executing the ratification law.

But the judges did not deal with this AfD urgent application in their decision on Wednesday.

This causes astonishment in the AfD: "Amazingly, it is still not clear whether and when a decision will be made on the application of our interim injunction," said AfD finance politician Albrecht Glaser WELT.

For the time being, it remains unclear whether the pending procedure for the AfD urgent application could also be an obstacle to the Federal President's execution of the law.

One can only speculate that the rejection of the urgent application submitted by the Lucke Group does not imply a particularly high chance of success for the AfD application either.

In any case, the Office of the Federal President is now "entering the issuing procedure" for the ratification law, as a spokeswoman for WELT said.

The discussion about a permanent debt union is unlikely to end in any case, even if the constitutional judges expressly stated in their preliminary ruling that they consider the reconstruction fund to be permissible because it is a one-off measure in an exceptional economic situation - and indeed no permanent.

This statement is also important in the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

“Karlsruhe is giving a clear stop sign to Finance Minister Scholz's plans for a fiscal and debt union.

The European debt borrowing is clearly temporary and unique, ”says Eckhardt Rehberg, budget spokesman for the Union.

A debt union cannot be made with them.

Similar voices come from the EU Parliament: "The Next Generation EU reconstruction plan is a unique crisis reaction tool and not the starting shot for the debt union," warns the CSU finance politician Markus Ferber, who heads the Christian Democratic EPP group in the economic sector - and Monetary Committee of the European Parliament.

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