The Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) face to ECJ and German Federal Constitutional Court caselaw
Background and consequences of the BVerfG decision of 5 May 2020 (2 BvR 859/15)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rdce.68.03Abstract
On 5 May 2020, the German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) declared the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), and hence ECJ’s Weiss preliminary ruling that had validated it, as ultra vires. It is a no return point in the so-called dialogue between both courts. Disagreements concerned ECB’s mandate (art. 127 TFEU), particularly how the principle of proportionality should be applied on monetary policy decisions, and different approaches on ECB’s independency and accountability on those decisions with indirect economic effects. All together led the BVerfG to declare that the EU had had exceeded its competences in a «structurally significant» manner. Keeping the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) in mind the BVefG accepted, with objections, the conditions imposed to the PSPP for fulfilling art. 123 TFEU (prohibition of monetary financing). Since the decision actually has had no direct effects on the programme in practice, damages on the principle of primacy of EU law would not deserve the initiation of an infringement procedure. This article starts analysing the BVerfG ultra vires doctrine (section II), the influence of monetarism in the design of the ECB mandate (III), how the ECJ understands the judicial control on it (IV) face to the positions of the BVerfG (V), the effects of the decision on the principle of primacy (VI) and it closes with some concluding remarks on the contributions of this «dialogue» for improving democratic legitimacy of the monetary policy.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
Submission of a manuscript to the RDCE implies having read and accepted the journal's editorial guidelines and instructions for authors. When a work is accepted for publication, it is understood that the author grants the RDCE exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and, where appropriate, sale of his manuscript for exploitation in all countries of the world in printed version, as well as any other magnetic, optical and digital media.
Authors shall transfer the publishing rights of their manuscript to RDCE so that it may be disseminated and capitalised on Intranets, the Internet and any web portals and wireless devices that the publisher may decide, by placing it at the disposal of users so that the latter may consult it online and extract content from it, print it and/or download and save it. These activities must comply with the terms and conditions outlined on the website hosting the work. However, the RDCE authorises authors of papers published in the journal to include a copy of these papers, once published, on their personal websites and/or other open access digital repositories. Copies must include a specific mention of RDCE, citing the year and issue of the journal in which the article was published, and adding a link to the RDCE website(s).
A year after its publication, the works of the RDCE will be under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and its first publication is indicated, without the right to commercial exploitation and the elaboration of derivative works.
Plagiarism and scientific fraud
The publication of work that infringes on intellectual property rights is the sole responsibility of the authors, including any conflicts that may occur regarding infringement of copyright. This includes, most importantly, conflicts related to the commission of plagiarism and/or scientific fraud.
Practices constituting scientific plagiarism are as follows:
1. Presenting the work of others as your own.
2. Adopting words or ideas from other authors without due recognition.
3. Not using quotation marks or another distinctive format to distinguish literal quotations.
4. Giving incorrect information about the true source of a citation.
5. The paraphrasing of a source without mentioning the source.
6. Excessive paraphrasing, even if the source is mentioned.
Practices constituting scientific fraud are as follows:
1. Fabrication, falsification or omission of data and plagiarism.
2. Duplicate publication.
3. Conflicts of authorship.
Warning
Any breach of these Rules shall constitute a ground for rejection of the manuscript submitted.
