Frankfurt (AFP)

A former conservative MP and business lawyer was elected president of the powerful German Constitutional Court on Friday, in the immediate wake of his recent controversial ruling on the European Central Bank.

The upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, confirmed 48-year-old Stephan Harbarth, who has been vice-president of the supreme court in Karlsruhe since 2018.

He will replace outgoing President Andreas Vosskuhle, whose 12-year term ended on May 6, just one day after the ruling that ordered the ECB to justify its eurozone aid program in three months, causing an institutional crisis in Europe.

If Mr. Vosskuhle had been proposed to the presidency of the German Supreme Court by the German Social Democratic Party, Mr. Harbarth owes his nomination to him in support of the conservative CDU party of Angela Merkel and her Bavarian ally of the CSU.

The appointment of Mr. Harbarth as a federal constitutional judge was the subject of upstream criticism due in particular to his past as a successful business lawyer, notably alongside the automobile giant Volkswagen in the midst of "Dieselgate" , deemed to be exposing him to a risk of conflicts of interest.

Several applications have even been filed before the Karlsruhe Court to prevent his appointment, but without success.

On a proposal from the Green Party, the Bundesrat also elected law professor Astrid Wallrabenstein on Friday as a constitutional judge to fill the seat left vacant by Mr. Vosskuhle in the Second Senate, one of the chambers of the Court.

Other magistrates sitting in the supreme court will also be replaced by 2024. They must be elected by a two-thirds majority of the two chambers of Parliament, which in principle limits the risks of purely political appointments.

- Procedure against Germany? -

The institution's new president, revered in Germany for supposedly protecting the rule of law and democracy since the Second World War, is expected to take office in the coming weeks.

It will do so in the midst of a storm following the judgment rendered last week by the institution, very jealous of its independence, against the massive redemptions of public debt of the ECB.

The judges wearing the red robe and toque attacked two European institutions: the ECB, believing that it had to be more justified since it got out of its strict role of piloting rates by buying public debt in billions of euros; and the European Court of Justice, which had dubbed the program of the monetary institute, without having evaluated it sufficiently in the eyes of the German magistrates.

This warning shot poses a threat to the ECB's support programs for the euro area and to the future of the single currency as a whole.

The European Commission has raised the threat of an infringement procedure against Germany in the face of the questioning of European justice.

But this imbroglio could lead Berlin to take more of its responsibilities in aid to the euro zone, instead of letting this task rest on the shoulders of the ECB alone.

© 2020 AFP