German court questions ECB

struggling eurozone countries is compatible with Germany’s Basic Law.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, entering the court, said he was confident that the ECB was acting within its mandate.

“We have no doubt the ECB is acting within its mandate,” Schaeuble told reporters.
The government would await the court proceedings, but was confident about the outcome, he added.
Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann is one of the most vocal critics of the Outright Monetary Transactions bond purchase programme and is scheduled to take the stand alongside ECB executive board member Joerg Asmussen.

But while experts suggest the hearings could become a sort of showdown between the two central banks, Weidmann himself denied that would be the case.

“It’s not about two central banks fighting before the court,” Weidmann was quoted by Dow Jones Newswires as saying at a Bundesbank conference in Frankfurt on Monday.

“Two representatives of the central banks were invited as experts and will answer the court’s questions,” he added.

Asmussen told the mass-circulation daily Bild in an interview on Monday that the ECB was not in the dock over the bond purchases programme.

“We’ve been invited as experts and the hearings will provide a good opportunity to explain the advantages of the OMT,” he said.

The issue for the court is whether the scheme is in line with Germany’s constitution. Ever since the ECB unveiled the OMT to buy up the sovereign debt of the euro area’s most debt-wracked members last summer, fears of a break-up of the single currency have indeed receded.

Europe’s storm-battered financial markets have enjoyed a period of relative calm, without a single OMT ever being carried out.

Nevertheless, like many of the ECB’s emergency anti-crisis measures, the OMT has its critics — both in the pro-euro and anti-euro camps — who claim it oversteps the central bank’s mandate and is unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs, a diverse group of German politicians, lawyers and citizens, argue the ECB is creating risks for German taxpayers that their elected representatives cannot control. — AFP.