EU Top Court Hits Back After German Judges’ ‘Declaration of War’
EU Top Court Hits Back After German Judges’ ‘Declaration of War’
(Bloomberg) -- The European Union’s top court hit back on Friday after German judges delivered the most stinging attack in its 68-year history with a landmark ruling on the powers of the European Central Bank.
In an unprecedented statement, the EU Court of Justice warned of the risks to the EU’s legal order if national courts start openly questioning the binding decisions by the Luxembourg-based institution.
It said the court’s entire purpose is to make sure EU law is properly applied across the 27-nation bloc.
“Divergences between courts of the member states as to the validity of such acts would indeed be liable to place in jeopardy the unity of the EU legal order and to detract from legal certainty,” the Court of Justice of the EU said.
In a long-awaited ruling on the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing program, Germany’s constitutional court on May 5 accused the EU tribunal of overstepping its powers when it backed the ECB’s controversial policy. German judges in the ruling said the EU court in its 2018 ruling in the case was “objectively arbitrary.”
The court said it alone “has jurisdiction to rule that an act of an EU institution is contrary to EU law” and “national courts are required to ensure that EU law takes full effect.” It said that this is “the only way of ensuring the equality” of EU nations.
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