Which economic and monetary union? Reflections on the Gauweiler saga

Abstract

The constitutionality of the ECB programme of acquisition of public debt of states suffering a fiscal crisis was challenged before the German Constitutional Court, which, in its turn, pose a preliminary question to the European Court of Justice, revolving around the validity of the programme under EU law. In this case note, I reconstruct the key arguments put forward in three judicial decisions on the case. It is my claim that the European Court of Justice avoided, instead of tackling, the fundamental questions posed by the guardian of the German Fundamental Law. In particular, the ECJ ignored the key distinction between discretionality in the exercise of conferred powers and discretionality in the elucidation of the powers of an institution, and assumed (on the basis of the prescient arguments of the Advocate General) that the OMT programme was an emergency measure, when in fact it is but the symptom of the collapse of the basic norms framing public power in the Economic and Monetary Union.