IMFS hosts Twelfth German-Turkish Forum for Constitutional Law

During a two-day conference of the IMFS, legal experts from Turkey and Germany discussed current aspects of financial stability in comparison between Germany and Turkey.

How to maintain price stability and financial stability in Germany and Turkey was the leading question during the German-Turkish Forum for Constitutional Law on September 29 and 30. At the conference, which had been organized this year by the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS), judicial experts, central bankers and market participants from both countries discussed ways of safeguarding price stability and explored the limits of credit financing.

Professor Christian Waldhoff of Humboldt University explained the legal framework of price stability in German constitutional law and on the European level. In his speech Professor Helmut Siekmann, IMFS, analyzed how price stability is maintained in the eurozone and described its role within the European System of Central Banks. In this regard, he made clear why the OMT programme of the European Central Bank was not in line with the legal basis of the ECB. In comparison to that, Șebnem Özbek Uygun of the Turkish Central Bank, delineated the situation in Turkey, illustrating the possibilities of maintaining price stability on the basis of the Turkish legal system. Furthermore, Ismail Can gave on overview about the judicial and decision-making bodies of the Turkish Court of Accounts. Professor Werner Heun of the University of Göttingen depicted the debt rules according to German constitutional law combined with the rules and regulations on the European level. Without the cost of the reunification Germany would be one the countries with fewest debt in the world reaching a debt level of about 40 per cent, Heun said. Finally, the participants discussed the monetary and fiscal policy in Germany and Turkey and their respective legal framework.

The German-Turkish Forum for Constitutional Law aims at the academic exchange of ideas about basic issues of constitutional law in both countries. The conference series was established by Otto Depenheuer, Ilyas Dogan and Osman Can and takes place alternately in Germany and Turkey.

Click here for the photo gallery of the conference.