Posted on 05/14/2020 11:32:50 AM PDT by cartan
A ruling by Germany’s constitutional court has sparked serious fears of the unravelling of the European Union. It’s a delayed judgment from an old fight that has hit the EU at its most vulnerable. A group of German academics, including a former leader of the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland, Bernd Lucke, took a case in 2015 to challenge the bond-buying programme of the European Central Bank (ECB).
They hardly hoped to win, but thought they could make a political point. During the euro zone crisis, as now, the ECB was buying the debt of economically weaker EU countries to bid down their borrowing costs and rescue them from the threat of a debt spiral, and directing national central banks to do likewise.
This is an emergency measure taken to hold the euro zone together when its economic imbalances threaten to tear it apart, but it has long been hated by German conservatives who believe it harms savers and pension funds.
Last week, the German constitutional court unexpectedly sided with them. It ruled that the ECB failed to conduct a “proportionality” analysis of the effect of its bond-buying policies on “public debt, personal savings, pension and retirement schemes, real estate prices and the keeping afloat of economically unviable companies”. In a pithy 110-page judgment, the court ordered the German central bank to stop buying bonds if the ECB failed to produce such an assessment within three months. This immediately raised fears it could jeopardise current bond-buying efforts, and cause a run on Italian debt. This is perilous to the euro zone, but not as damaging to the EU as another part of the ruling, which has tugged at a thread that some fear may lead to the unravelling of its very order.
The German court stated that it was free to ignore an earlier ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the issue because “the Court of Justice of the European Union exceeds its judicial mandate”.
This is contrary to the concept of the primacy of EU law. Under this precept, if laws of a member state are in conflict with EU law, EU law takes precedence, and the ECJ is the final authority to adjudicate on it. For the European Commission, agreeing to this is what it means to be a member state.
“The case goes to the very heart, to the very basis of the European Union,” an EU official said. “The union is based on uniform interpretation and application of law,” he added. “Otherwise we have no union.”
The German court managed to make such a ruling because it “slipped through the door of attributed competence”, according to the official. This refers to the fact that the governments of member states grant EU institutions some powers, while retaining others for themselves.
The court deemed it had the authority to rule because the ECJ had strayed out of its jurisdiction into an arena of national power. This is contrary to EU treaties, which hold that the ECJ is the arbiter of EU law, including on determining where the boundaries of EU institutional powers lie.
The EU is weighing its options, and will observe the reaction of the German government as it assesses whether it can go after it for infringing EU law.
But a knot of fundamental principles binds the ability of both Brussels and Berlin to respond.
According to the principle of judicial independence, the German government is powerless to interfere with the judgment of the court.
While the Republic has amended its Constitution several times to adapt it to EU law, the German conundrum cannot be fixed this way. It is grounded in the German constitution’s “eternity clause”. Adopted after the second World War to ensure there could never again be a dictatorship, the clause guarantees certain fundamental principles and can never be amended.
The German constitutional court is highly influential in the region. Its ruling was music to the ears of EU critics in Poland and Hungary.
These countries are already battling judgments from the ECJ, which has found against them for interfering with the independence of their courts. Following the German precedent, their courts can simply deem that the ECJ has overstepped its powers, and can thus be ignored.
The EU is not a state, and has no army, or national guard. Its enforcement powers are limited. Its legal order relies on the voluntary compliance of member states and their courts.
“If national courts stop co-operating the whole system grinds to a halt,” said Ronan McCrea, professor of constitutional and European law at University College London. “Member states have been upholding it all for 40 years. Maybe we became complacent about how weak the system to ensure that is.”
Surely he’ll volunteer hundreds of thousands of surrender monkeys for the army. Even provide white surrender flags.
It’s even more than that, the German Basic Law has 19 articles and parts of a 20th that cannot be amended, by any one, for any reason. Fundamental protections to prevent another dictator.
The EU is claiming that the EU can effectively overrule member constitutions, to include these unamendable portions of the Basic Law. This is an irreconcilable difference.
Quite right. That is why we have FEDERALISM. National government for the big things like foreign trade, defense and monetary policy. State government for everything else. But not if Nancy Pelosi and her one size fits all top down control freaks have their way.
“I’m no EU expert, but I seem to observe that the least motivated among them (Greece, Portugal, etc) gain the most from the relatively more productive members.”
Yes and no. If they truly gained, other than for short terms, they would not be so bad off. But we know from a U.S. domestic policy perspective, that helping folks stay on the dole, again and again, does not help them dig themselves out of a hole you keep rescuing them from.
Portugal, among those you mentioned, was really not doing to bad. Their 2016 fiscal deficit was only 2.1% of GDP. The U.S. deficit to GDP ratio was 3.x% in 2016 and 4.x% in 2019. Think the U.S. cannot lecture Portugal on deficits.
When you have no one to blame, but your own policies, you either make the structural changes you need to make to get your domestic economy in better shape, and a more competitive trader, or else when you must borrow to serve your deficit spending and must pay “uncomfortable” interest rates to do that; you KNOW it is your fault and you have no excuses. We have a two-party duopoly in the U.S. that does not give damn about how much debt they accumulate in the name of the people.
The short explanation is: words came to taps, taps came to pushes, pushes came to shoves, shoves came to blows, blows came to shots and war was on.
The longer explanation is, the Union was willing to tolerate secession & Confederacy, but not the seizure of many Federal properties, most notably, Fort Sumter.
When Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to retake seized forts, etc., Confederates declared war and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nothing happening in the European Union these days seems likely to repeat our tragic history.
Sounds like a much better plan than the European Union pursues.
“When Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to retake seized forts, etc., Confederates declared war and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Well, thank you for that take. It’s the best I have read to date. It seems, from other reading, that both sides were spoiling for a fight. They each thought they owned morality and would fight to the end to justify their ownership. (As it turns out, they were both wrong.) No, I don’t think the EU will erupt into civil war. It was a cluster F from the beginning; a soviet union without the (thank God) military. It’s just going quietly into that good night. (When I say quietly, I mean we will hear the gnashing of teeth from liberals from here to Antarctica.)
You really believe that? Watch when California and Illinois got belly up, they will be bailed out by healthier blue states, count on it.
Lincoln never had any sound legal reasoning either. The real reason of course is that the Southern states were the cash cow that had long financed the federal government with its lavish subsidies and infrastructure projects for the Northern states and it also served as a lucrative captive market for inferior Northern manufactured goods. With all its exports, the Southern states stood to be far better off financially by simply leaving and keeping the money their trade generated for themselves.
We lost but gave ‘em a good four year scrap. Well, that was in reality but it may have been modified or omitted for schooling recent generations. My father told me his grandfather returned from the war missing a leg. I asked what he did once he got back home. My dad said,”He sat on the porch a lot!”...duh. Guess the internet in the country was bad way back then as well....
Cooperation? Trade? No soldiers on borders? OK,sure.Sounds a lot like the relationship that the US and Canada have with each other.But the US and Canada maintain full sovereignty over their internal affairs while maintaining friendly relations.Exactly. That is what it always should have been. And not more.Sounds like a much better plan than the European Union pursues.
Yep. Ft Sumter = Gulf of Tonkin
Lee was clearly a sociopath (It takes a good sociopath to effectively send men into battle) that really, REALLY blew it at Gettysburg. Multiple mistakes were made.
All that said, I side with the south’s states rights sentiment, but I’m glad the union was preserved. It would be a very different continent and world had the south succeeded. We’d be like France and Germany. And come 1940 that could have been ugly.
If Lee was a sociopath, so was every other general. That’s what command is - sending men into battle knowing some of them will die.
As for 1940....had the US not intervened in the first world war and tipped the balance in the Entente’s favor, it almost certainly comes to a negotiated settlement. Both sides were exhausted. No Versailles and no Triannon Treaties and Imperial Germany is left intact with the constitutional monarchy still intact. Hitler then is politically impossible. The Hapsburg Empire remains intact. An enormous power vacuum is not created in Central/Eastern Europe that Germany or the Soviet Union was guaranteed to fill. WWII simply does not happen - nor does the holocaust.
So if the Southern states had left, would the remaining rump US have intervened in WWI? It would have been nowhere near the power it was with about 1/3rd of the land and population gone. It might’ve stuck to a more modest foreign policy as it had generally had prior to its entry into WWI.
Ever read Harry Turtledove? He actually explores that stuff in his “alternate history” novels.
In one, because the south won the civil war, the entire continent split and the result was that during WWI the north supported Germany and the south supported France/England. There was an American front.
By far, his best book is Guns of the South. A bunch of South Africans from 2015 go back in time and start off by, right after Gettysburg, give Lee 100,000 AK 47’s. The impact on individual battles as well as the “secret” response of Lee is a fascinating read. There is one great line where the “riverton men” (the guys from the future) have these simply amazing rations that Lee and others are mesmerized by. They’re called “Cup-o-noodles”. :)
His later books are in multiple volumes and cover post-civil war, WWI and even WWII. In WWII we are invaded by aliens in 1942 (IIRC) and suddenly everybody is working together - sort of. It was interesting but after a while I felt like I was being strung along, as is done in so many modern TV shows.
“... give Lee 100,000 AK 47’s.”
Did they remember to bring the mags and the ammo? /s
Yikes, a hundred or so modern automatic weapons would of changed to course of the war.
Yikes, a hundred or so modern automatic weapons would of changed to course of the war.
Yep. It did. The battle between two guys in a foxhole guarding a road with AK’s vs a rather large force with muskets is interesting. But it’s not simple science fiction “mow ‘em down with futuristic weapons” stuff. It really feels like what it would be like with some moterately trained rebels protecting the road. There are also some interesting surprises with other “futuristic” weapons. Not to mention the white rectangle with a bunch of squares on it with letters on each square. They call it a “querty”. ;)
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