This emerges from a letter from the Leyens to the Green European politician Sven Giegold, which is available. "I take this very seriously," the Saturday letter said. The German Federal Constitutional Court had criticized the ECB's billion-dollar government bond purchases on
Tuesday, and for the first time opposed a judgment of the European Court of Justice. Unlike the ECJ, the Karlsruhe judges decided that the central bank had overstretched its mandate.
They called the ECJ judgment "objectively arbitrary" and "methodologically no longer justifiable". Giegold had therefore asked the EU Commission to initiate infringement proceedings. Von der Leyen, in her reply to the MEP,
confirmed that the German judgment is currently being analyzed in detail, but has already added: "On the basis of these findings, we are examining possible next steps, including infringement proceedings."
The ruling by the Constitutional Court raised questions that touched the core of European sovereignty, the letter said. The Union's monetary policy is an exclusive competence. EU law takes precedence over national law and ECJ judgments are binding on all national courts.
"The last word on EU law always has the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg," wrote von der Leyen. The EU is a community of values and law that the EU Commission will uphold and defend at all times. According to EU law, this is the responsibility of the Brussels authority:
it is the "guardian" of the EU treaties and must punish violations. If it initiates proceedings for violation of the contracts, this can in turn end up before the ECJ. Giegold, spokesman for the German Greens and Chairman of the Greens in the currency
committee of the European Parliament, said on Saturday that he was not simply criticizing the Federal Constitutional Court. But the dispute between Karlsruhe and Luxembourg threatens the European legal community.
"The German Federal Constitutional Court urges the German Bundesbank as well as the German federal government and the Bundestag into a conflict with the ECB," wrote the Greens politician. That is why all EU institutions should clearly stand behind the European Court of Justice.
"As the guardian of the treaties, the Commission must initiate proceedings. The MEP sees the judgment as a threat to the stability of the monetary union.
It also acts as an invitation to the courts of other European Court of Justice to circumvent Giegold is not alone with his scolding sentence. The SPD European politician Katarina Barley spoke in the "Passauer Neue Presse" of a fatal signal.
The European lawyer Franz Mayer compared the judgment with an "atomic bomb".
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