John Ward – Breaking : German Supreme Court Rules Against Merkel On ESM. Will She Now Recognise The Rule Of Law? – 19 June 2012
Karlsruhe Judges…fancy dress, or citizen protection with teeth?
The Karlsruhe judges today found that the center-right coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel had breached the rights of the German parliament by failing to sufficiently inform lawmakers during negotiations towards the creation of the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
This decision is “a further important building block in a series of decisions by the Constitutional Court that strengthen parliamentary responsibility in the context of European integration,” the president of the court, Andreas Vosskuhle, said.
But is it? If – like the case for a Weimar ruling against Nazi violence in 1931* – it is simply ignored, then what good is Karslruhe?
The decision follows another that the court handed down in February, in which it struck down a plan to create a committee of just nine members of the Bundestag to decide in secret about emergency measures regarding the euro. Then too, the court argued that the entire assembly must be involved in such decisions.
But it did not declare an ESM unconstituional in Bundeslaw…even though it obviously is, because of the anti-fiat money printing clauses in the BundesRepublik constitution.
Ironically, the court heard the case based on a complaint brought by the opposition Green party. No members of the anti-Warmist Right were to be seen anywhere in all this. Equally ironic is Wolfgang Schäuble’s obsessive fixation with a hyperinflation that occurred under entirely different circumstances ninety years ago.
However, far more significant than any irony is the reality that the Bundestag and the upper house, the Bundesrat, are expected to approve the creation of the ESM when they vote on the issue on June 29.
The educated sector of German life needs to get on top of this…unless Germans want to change their nation’s name to ‘DDR’.
* In 1931, the German Jewish lawyer Hans Litten became the only ordinary German citizen ever to bring Adolf Hitler into Court and interrogate the future Fuhrer. Litten’s demolition of Hitler’s argument that the Nazis were a peaceful, democratic movement earned the lawyer years of brutal persecution. His obviously valid case against the Nazis was undermined throughout the trial by a frightened Judge. He died in a concentration camp in 1939.
