The FINANCIAL — A prominent German eurosceptic Sunday tabled a complaint against the European Central Bank's new bond-buying programme at the country's top court in a fresh bid to block the eurozone's rescue fund.
Peter Gauweiler, a lawmaker from the CSU Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, said the 500-billion-euro ($630-billion) new ESM fund should not come into force unless the ECB rows back on its new programme.
"The ESM — insofar as it is constitutionally viable at all — should only come into force when the ECB has taken back its self-awarded power as a hyper rescue-shield," Gauweiler said in a statement.
He said the fresh complaint could call into question the timing of a hotly awaited ruling by the Constitutional Court Wednesday on a slew of legal challenges to the ESM and the EU's fiscal pact for more budgetary discipline.
The ECB's decision Thursday to buy unlimited amounts of the bonds of struggling eurozone nations has created a "completely new situation" in the court's deliberations on the ESM, he said.
If the Constitutional Court was not able to rule on this latest challenge, it should delay its judgement on the ESM beyond Wednesday, Gauweiler said.
Gauweiler argues the ESM is incompatible with Germany's constitution because it puts Europe's top economy and paymaster on the hook for unlimited guarantees and thereby removes democratic control over the country's budgetary planning.
The ESM, which will replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility, should have been up and running by July 1.
But it needs Germany's share of the rescue money to function and has thus been held up pending the Constitutional Court's ruling.
As EUbusiness reported, analysts believe the court will not block the crisis tools.
A court spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.
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