The German Constitutional Court rejected the appeal aimed at blocking the ratification by the German Parliament of the decision on the EU’s own resources, the legal act that allows the European Commission to go to the markets and finance Next Generation Eu, the 750 billion euro plan for post-Covid recovery. “A summary examination does not reveal a strong likelihood of a violation of constitutional law,” the court explains on its website. The German court will continue its examination, but rejected the request for urgent suspension. “It is good news that reinforces confidence that the ratification process of the decision on own resources will be finalized, as we had foreseen, by the end of June”, commented the vice president of the EU Commission Valdis Dombrovskis, recalling that this “would allow the funding to start in July, obviously subject to the approval of the recovery plans of the member states”. And for the EU Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, “the decision of the German Constitutional Court is important in Germany and is a great step forward on the road to the European recovery plan”.
On 26 March the Karlsruhe Court ordered the President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier not to sign the law on the decision of the EU Council relating to the system of the Union’s own resources, which had been definitively approved by the two branches of Parliament German. It was a temporary suspension that risked jeopardizing the timely entry into operation of Next Generation Eu. The Court had decided the suspension following the filing of various appeals, including that of the founder of AfD, the anti-euro economist Bernd Lücke, later exited from the ultra-right party and now at the head of the civic movement Bündnis Bürgerwille. The movement’s website explained that 2,281 citizens contest the common indebtedness which is the basis of the Recovery Fund, considering it “inadmissible” in Germany.
Without ratification of the EU own resources decision by all 27 member states, the EU Commission cannot issue the bonds that will finance the Recovery Fund. But Germany is not the only country where ratification is having problems. The Portuguese presidency of the EU still in February had indicated the end of March-early April as the time horizon for the completion of the process, while now the forecasts indicate the end of June: there are complications for different reasons also in Holland, Finland, Austria, Poland , Hungary and Romania. So far only 17 Member States, including Italy, out of 27 have already ratified the decision.
It is not the first time that the Karlsruhe court has been brought up on European aid. It had happened for the famous Quantitative easing launched by the then president of the ECB Mario Draghi and still in operation, and for the Omt program never used for direct purchase of the securities of countries in difficulty on the markets. In both cases, the appeals did not stop the measures.