Op-ed piece by Volker Wieland on OMT hearing: "The ECJ's carte blanche for the ECB is going too far" (n-tv.de)

The Federal Constitutional Court should take the opportunity to send a clear signal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ has kept the ECB's competences too wide, Volker Wieland writes in an op-ed piece at the beginning of the OMT hearings in Karlsruhe.

The OMT program actually aims at keeping the eurozone in its current structure. Thus, the emergency program serves a purpose that can no longer count as monetary policy and rather falls within the competence of the member states, Wieland writes.

The unlimited purchase of bonds of a single state and the coverage of default risks infringe the prohibiton of monetary financing according to Wieland.

In his opinion, the ECB's argument that the central bank is allowed to interfere in case the monetary transmission mechanism is disturbed is not appropriate. Monetary policy relies upon many aspects, Wieland said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk. There are many factors that could influence the monetary transmission mechanism. On that basis, the ECB could justify many other programs which would interfere even more with economic policy than the announcement of OMT, Wieland said.

 

Op-ed piece on n-tv.de: "EuGH-Freibrief für EZB geht zu weit - Ein Signal nach Luxemburg"
Deutschlandfunk.de: "Umstrittenes Mandat der EZB"
Listen to the audio in the Deutschlandfunk media center
Handelsblatt: "Klage gegen EZB-Programm - Showdown in Karlsruhe"

Study of the Kronberger Kreis: "Das entgrenzte Mandat der EZB"