THE EIGHT red-robed judges will appear at 10am this morning with an important message for the packed Karlsruhe courtroom: the euro is not on trial.
Instead, Germany’s constitutional court judges will open a hearing into complaints that two euro zone bailout packages agreed last year violate the German constitution by making Germany liable for the debts of other EU states.
Some 50 complaints were filed with the court pertaining to the ad-hoc assistance to Greece and the temporary bailout fund used to assist Ireland and Portugal, worth €273 billion.
Three sample cases have been selected and complainants are confident they can secure a ruling on Germany’s share of loans to Greece and the fund. Such a ruling could have a knock-on effect on negotiations over the EU’s permanent stability mechanism – and the single currency itself.
One complainant is Bavarian deputy Peter Gauweiler, from the Bavarian wing of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, who headed a partially successful complaint against the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
"I think we have good chances of the court ending Germany's euro adventures," said Prof Karl-Albrecht Schachtschneider, another complainant, to the Frankfurter Allgemeinedaily.
“I am an opponent of the euro, completely and entirely, but I am still a friend of the European idea. I want to live in a federation of free European states and not in a forced union of European federal states based on destructive economic illusions.”
Complainants are expected to present public statements by several leading European politicians, including former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, that last year’s bailouts breached European law.
As Germany’s constitutional court has no jurisdiction over alleged breaches of European law, complainants will allege the bail-outs breach important principles of national budgetary law and impinge on the rights of German citizens.
At its most simple level: complainants argue that the temporary bailout fund violates the German constitution because it allows the current government to ear-mark funds from future budgets. The court will have to decide whether, by voting for last year’s bailouts, Bundestag deputies overstepped the rights of future colleagues.
Dr Franz C Mayer, for the federal government, is expected to argue that the financial packages before the court are limited both in duration and size and thus don’t represent a violation of the no-bailout clause.
Many court watchers expect a “yes, but” ruling, giving a green-light to the 2010 aid but attaching a strict legislative corset into how future bail-outs are to be interpreted in German law. A verdict is expected in the autumn.