"What ever happens at the national level,
there is then the European level to judge
on the illegality of the bailouts."
Haven't seen it directly but I think that the German Constitutional Court cases
scared Merkel into a treaty amendment.
That's what the council spokesman told me.
Merkel convinced Sarkozy then al the rest.
Without legal cover for the past illegalities a whole range of secret 'package deals'
will unravel causing absolute chaos.
My impression was that Kerber had a good case.
All this could be done through the UK courts yet no one seems to have
What ever happens at the national level, there is then the European level to judge
on the illegality of the bailouts.
===========================
Europe
Initiator of German lawsuit against eurozone bail-outs warns ECB is becoming a “bad bank”;
“The euro will fail, it’s better to face that”
Speaking in Brussels at an Open Europe seminar yesterday, German Professor Markus Kerber, the initiator of a lawsuit at the German Constitutional Court against the Greek and Irish bail-outs, criticised the European Central Bank’s policy of buying government bonds. He said that “if the ECB keeps on buying worthless government bonds, it will become a bad bank” and called for the European Court of Justice to restrain it.
On his lawsuit, he commented that the bail-outs were a “cardinal violation of EMU rules”. He explained that “in the German Parliament, a majority has approved the bail-out, but a constitutional majority was needed. That is our most manifest argument: that the fundamental veto right of the German Parliament has been ignored by the German government. Unless theGerman Constitutional Court ignores its own rulings it will agree.”
He referred to the Maastricht ruling by the German judges, arguing that it stated that “the German government is allowed to abandon its own currency, but only under the condition that the new currency will be as stable as the D-Mark. If that is not the case, the German government has the duty to leave the monetary union, it is explicitly stated.” He said that the EU treaties’ ban on bail-outs “extends to both the European Commission and the member states and sets the cornerstone principle that everyone is liable for its own risks. This is the ratio legisof the ‘no bail-out clause’ and it should be interpreted in this way. I'm sure that the Court will follow this reasoning.”
Kerber predicted that “the euro will fail, it’s better to face that”. He proposed that some countries leave, noting that “Portugal probably needs a devaluation”. He said that investors with stakes in struggling eurozone countries have to “understand that sometimes there is risk with a profit, and sometimes there is risk without a profit.”
Commenting on the EU’s Franco-German ‘political motor’, he said that, “Most German politicians have no inside knowledge of French policy. France sees the EU as the extension ofFrance. It always wants an exception.” He said that France was “the great obstacle” to reforming the EU and the single currency. “With France, the reform of EU is impossible,” he said. The event was covered by Belgian business magazine Trends, Dutch broadcaster NOS,RTE, RTV, and Euractiv.
Open Europe events Euractiv NOS Trends
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