At the last second, according to a report in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the federal government reacted to the infringement proceedings that the European Commission initiated against it because of the ECB ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court.

Brussels will now examine the letter, the content of which is not mentioned in the report.

Karlsruhe had declared a bond purchase program of the ECB to be partly unconstitutional.

The central bank did not adequately examine the economic policy effects of the program and exceeded its competence by purchasing government bonds worth billions of euros.

The Karlsruhe judges asked her to prove the proportionality of the bond purchases.

Thomas Thiel

Editor in the features section.

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The subsequent threat of infringement proceedings was rightly understood as the EU Commission's ultimate claim to power and a challenge to the member states. If no one other than the European Court of Justice is to be allowed to judge whether the European institutions are adhering to the treaties, then there would be no limit to their claim to power. You would be the judge of yourself and you would assign competencies as you see fit.

The judge is part of the executive in this case.

The European Court of Justice has long been accused of blessing the contractually unsupported increase in power of European institutions with weakly founded judgments (FAZ of May 20, 2020).

It's a dish with an agenda.

It judges in terms of the internal market and deeper integration.

There is also good reason to bring infringement proceedings against the ECJ to determine whether it is overdoing its judicial role.

Legitimation through toleration?

The Federal Constitutional Court has now had the nerve to ask whether the method of covert integration corresponds to the European treaties, whether the European Central Bank is exceeding its powers by buying government bonds and whether the newly created money is distributed fairly. It is several trillion euros. In addition, it criticized the European Court of Justice for its “arbitrary”, “absolutely incomprehensible” judgment. For this purpose, it used the legal instrument that it expressly reserves for decisions affecting Germany's constitutional identity.

Where is the scandal?

Anyone who fears that this will create an à la carte Europe and give the Polish and Hungarian governments an example of national arbitrariness is ignoring important differences.

The objection of the Federal Constitutional Court does not claim any national special rights, it concerns the question of whether the EU institutions act on a contractual basis.

Their policy of expansion is not contractually covered, their legitimation is fed by the fact that they are tolerated by the member states.

What answer would one expect if the decision on the legal limits of one's power is left in the hands of the European Court of Justice itself?

The role of the final guarantor

It is no accident that the trial of strength concerns the European Central Bank. The central bank has taken on a new political role since the financial crisis. It is the central authority for the economic preservation of the euro area and at the same time the central instrument for its power expansion. The announced infringement proceedings are therefore not only about the power relationship between Brussels and the member states, but also about the decision on a new style of government, which Angela Merkel could describe as a market-like democracy.

In essence, it is about a new relationship between the state and the market. The state governs the market permanently through the central bank. But it is becoming increasingly dependent on market mechanisms because the central bank, as the economist Joscha Wullweber explains in his readable book “Zentralbankkapitalismus” (Suhrkamp 2021), takes on the role of the ultimate guarantor - and that also for dubious financial products. It is no longer enough for the financial market to use the key interest rate to set the lines according to which it can generate liquidity for itself. She has to advance the money to him herself. With the market, as Wullweber explains, not only the commercial banks are meant, but also the shadow banking system, the investment banks or hedge funds with their high-risk speculations.The medium is a creation of trillions in money.