The BVerfG PSPP/Weiss Urteil and the Euro Area: a Constitutional Crossroads, a Dead-End… or Perhaps Not So Much?

Abstract

This article comments on the BVerfG Second Senate’s PSPP/Weiss Urteil, which declared as ultra vires the Decisions of the European Central Bank on a Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), on the previous BVerfG’s case-law on such ultra vires control of EU derivative legislation, as well as on the EUCJ’s Weiss Judgement which upheld such Decisions, in response to a preliminary reference submitted by the aforementioned Second Senate in the same case. The paper also reviews whether such EU legal acts truly breached the fundamental right to vote of the complainants before the BVerfG, as the Judgement found, or if it was rather an abstract claim due to an economic and political discrepancy in relation to the contested acts but lacking any actual legal relevance. The conformity with EU law of the BVerfG’s doctrine of its ultra vires Kontrolle on EU secondary law is also discussed, noting that its PSPP/Weiss Urteil has been the first German ruling to annul EU legal acts in application of such doctrine. The article concludes reflecting on the formal legal effects, if any, as well as on the unformal ones (maybe many), of this BVerfG’ Second Senate judgement over the future of the Euro Area.