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the ECB is about to settle its litigation with justice

German deputies, in the wake of the government, plan to support the European Central Bank’s aid programs on Thursday to end a conflict with the law threatening the future of aid plans for the euro zone.

It all started with a resounding judgment rendered on May 5 by the German Constitutional Court, at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

The supreme judges judged excessive and not enough “proportionate” programs of massive repurchases of debt of the ECB on the markets – 2,600 billion euros since 2015 – and demanded within three months that the monetary institute, but also the German authorities, explain themselves and prove the contrary.

Otherwise, the Court threatened to suspend the participation of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, in the financing of these aid plans. A catastrophic scenario for the euro zone because without the support of its main economy these interventions would be deprived of their effectiveness.

The main parliamentary groups in the German Chamber of Deputies intend to adopt a joint motion Thursday afternoon defending the action of the guardians of the euro.

– The euro must survive –

They believe that the ECB has since May 5 provided sufficient answers to demonstrate the “proportionality” of its decisions and the fact that it weighs their advantages and disadvantages.

Germany has a greater interest than the future of the common currency is preserved”, also indicate the elected officials in this motion guaranteed to be adopted since supported by a very large majority: the parties of the government coalition – conservatives of Angela Merkel and social democrats – thus two opposition groups, environmentalists and Liberals.

Only the extremes, right and left, did not want to join.

This parliamentary response comes in the wake of a similar position taken last week by the Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz, also qualifying the interventions of the ECB as “proportionate” and taking the opposite view of the Court.

For the minister, the German central bank “is empowered to continue to participate in (the) implementation” of debt buyouts.

The ECB also provided elements of response to the judges on 25 June. It did so indirectly via a document published on its website because it considers that it should be accountable only to European justice and not to any national court.

– New complaints? –

She explains her decisions there and considers that the negative effects of the absence of any support plan would have been much worse. Through its debt buybacks, public and private, the ECB seeks to relieve States and businesses in the euro zone in times of crisis.

Its latest emergency program, facing the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, amounts to 1.350 billion euros.

These different positions should henceforth make it possible to allay the wrath of the German Constitutional Court and to resolve the serious litigation opened in May.

The Court now considers that the case is “closed” and that it will not rule again “ex officio” on the subject once the answers have been given, a spokesman for the AFP told AFP. Court.

It will only seize it if new appeals are lodged tending to show that the conditions laid down have not been fulfilled.

This legal and financial soap opera may therefore not be completely finished because some German Eurosceptics, accustomed to proceedings against the ECB before the courts, are already finishing their weapons.

“We will judge on the evidence whether the conditions for the Bundesbank to continue to participate” in the ECB aid plans “have been fulfilled,” Peter Gauweiler, former head of the conservative CSU party in Bavaria, warned in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. ‘one of the applicants in the case decided on 5 May.

And if that is not the case in his eyes, he added, “I will ask that it be prohibited”.

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