11 December 2018
This ruling is frightening: the European Court of Justice now explicitly allows the European Central Bank to provide monetary financing, provided that it is temporary. The court clearly shot over its target of helping the ECB”, warned ECR Group MEP Bernd Lucke following a judgement from the ECJ on a case brought with a group of nearly 2000 plaintiffs against the ECB’s bond purchasing programme.
Lucke: ECJ goes against EU treaties in allowing ECB monetary financing
Strasbourg, 11 December 2018 - “This ruling is frightening: the European Court of Justice now explicitly allows the European Central Bank to provide monetary financing, provided that it is temporary. The court clearly shot over its target of helping the ECB”, warned ECR Group MEP Bernd Lucke following a judgement from the ECJ on a case brought with a group of nearly 2000 plaintiffs against the ECB’s bond purchasing programme.
“In the European treaties, monetary financing is essentially banned and there is no possibility that it would be acceptable in any circumstances. The spirit of the Maastricht Treaty to form a community of stability is being buried in Luxembourg.” said Lucke who has criticised the ECJ for further undermining the European Treaties: He has argued that the ECJ is not answering some very precise questions from both the German Federal Constitutional Court and the plaintiffs, who also include his colleagues Hans-Olaf-Henkel, Joachim Starbatty, Bernd Kölmel and Ulrike Trebesius.
Lucke continued:
“The fact that some questions from the Federal Constitutional Court remain unanswered also has positives. It means, that the Federal Constitutional Court must decide for itself in this case. In addition, it has already made clear that it has considerable doubts about the
admissibility of the ECB program. In particular, the question of a subsequent change in the distribution of losses to the detriment of the federal budget is highly explosive. Given the background of a possible default in another country, it is completely incomprehensible that the ECJ refused to give an answer to this problem.”