Sunday, May 17, 2020

Albrecht Glaser, May 7, 2020, European Central Bank Loan Purchases


Albrecht Glaser
European Central Bank Loan Purchases
German Bundestag, May 7, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/158, pp. 19611-19612

[Albrecht Glaser is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Hessen. He has a number of years experience as a public administrator and elected official and is currently a member of the Bundestag finance committee.]

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Respectable citizens have undertaken real responsibility. Out of concern for our state, they have taken pains to defend on constitutional grounds this country’s democracy against the EU’s accumulation of competences. Do not confuse the independence of the ECB [European Central Bank] with the over-stepping of its legal treaty mandates. This distinction is decisive and it is here being obtrusively jumbled up [penetrant durcheinanderworfen].

After five years’ proceedings and the commitment of much money and time, the petitioners have obtained a decision from the Federal Constitutional Court which now is causing excitement. In previous interpretation and analysis of the decision, a colleague of the Greens from this house urged a court reprimand and in addition conducted an unmitigated personal attack upon the president of the Court.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): My goodness!

Basically, it concerns a state loan purchase program of the ECB system with an already disposed volume of around 3 trillion euros, and it concerns the intention to take upon the books of the central banking system, with foreseeable, fatal consequences, additional debts of European states of unlimited term and size. The liability issue is completely ignored; no one can answer it, anyone who understands a bit of it knows that it is immense.

The Court holds that the Federal government and the Bundestag have violated the rights of the complainants under Article 38, paragraph 1, line 1, in conjunction with Article 20, paragraphs 1 and 2, in conjunction with Article 79 of the Basic Law [Grundgesetz] – that is not a small detail.

The Federal government and the Bundestag, instead of taking the lead, had neglected to call the ECB to account for the lack of a suitable proportionality test for the implementation of the purchase program. The considerations of the ECJ [European Court of Justice] of the proportionality of the ECB’s proceedings were not comprehensible and anyway presented in this case an over-stepping of the competence of the ECJ. Even courts can over-step their competences.

The Constitutional Court, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, having an oversight role to inquire into substantiated complaints, as it is said, of the over-stepping of competences by EU organs, in this case had to diverge from the viewpoint of the ECJ.

The guardian of the treaty is this Constitutional Court; it has done this, its duty. This was and is urgently necessary; since the ECJ has never been the guardian of subsidiarity and the principles of conferred powers [Einzelmächtigung]. It has already for many years, without any legal basis, adjudicated the EU treaties, and has ruled that the legislative authority [Rechsetzung] of the EU basically displaces national law, especially national constitutional law. You should re-assess the value of the Basic Law, the jubilee of which has been recently celebrated, ladies and gentlemen; this Basic Law is moribund.

According to the Federal Constitutional Court, the rights of the complainants were violated because the self-proclaimed sovereign rights of the EU organs must submit to the constitutionally defended right to democracy of every citizen of this country. Thus, the constitutional complaints were essentially confirmed, all procedural costs to be refunded to the lead complainants. The [EU] Commission declares with sovereign authority – without itself being a state – that EU law breaks national law. The decision will therefore be precisely tested. Der Finger steht.

This power politics viewpoint is also just now being expressed by Jean Claude Juncker. Who would have thought it? Bruno Le Maire and Giuseppe Conte see their interests as highly indebted countries endangered. They now see the neutrality endangered by the Federal Constitutional Court, which only admonished the observance of the EU treaty competences; the Constitutional Court does nothing other – power politics versus law. We indeed are experiencing a European Politics Live.

The finance ministers and euromaniacs of all colors distort the decision of the Constitutional Court, asserting that it acknowledged – that it in fact again amplified – that the ECB had in principal the right to purchase state loans. That is nevertheless not the case. The Federal Constitutional Court rather more expounded on the administration of the criteria which the ECJ itself set out for loan acquisition which, not violating the ban on state financing, meet with important consideration – to cite verbatim. On the question of state loans, the Federal Constitutional Court sees itself in principal bound by the interpretation of the ECJ, and not because it may itself have been persuaded.

That is a regrettable declaration of submission by the Federal Constitutional Court which shows

            Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, you must come to 
             a conclusion.

that in the EU treaties there is no instrument to prevent a systematic, steady expansion of competences in this union of states, ladies and gentlemen, and that is the actual problem. Therefore, this problem which we have before us will become further knotted and the EU will run further into heavy seas.

            Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague.

Many thanks.


[Translated by Todd Martin]