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]
