Is Berlin chaining the constitutional court?
Euro politics and especially the highly controversial ECB bond purchases in Germany were a minefield for the Chancellor for 16 years. As a reminder of this, a huge bomb hits the Berlin government district five days before Merkel’s resignation from office: The Brussels EU Commission is discontinuing its infringement proceedings against Germany – but only because the federal government has previously formally declared that it will not come forward to feel bound by a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on the ECB bond purchases.
I’m sorry, what? Germany’s highest court disapproves of the bond purchases and gives up the government to intervene against the inflation-driving and, from Karlsruhe point of view, illegal ECB policy, and after Brussels frowns, the Chancellor declares that its own constitutional court is irrelevant? If it actually happened as the EU Commission has now presented, it would be an unprecedented affront to Karlsruhe and a tangible institutional crisis that touches the very foundations of the German separation of powers.
The dispute is not about a minor issue: it is essentially about how much inflation the European Central Bank wants and is allowed to expect the German citizens on the altar of the euro rescue and state financing. If you hear the German ECB director Isabel Schnabel rant after the withdrawal of Bundesbank President Weidmann, you could be terrified. A person from Olaf Scholz’s environment gives a little hope: If the new Chancellor actually appoints the stability-oriented ex-Bundesbanker Joachim Nagel as Weidmann’s successor, common sense in monetary policy would still have a voice in Germany in the future.
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