Resumen de Activating Ultra Vires Review: The German Federal Constitutional Court Decides Weiss
In its famous PSPP judgment, the German Federal Constitutional Court activated for the first time its ultra vires doctrine and declared that both the Secondary Markets Public Sector Asset Purchase Programme of the European Central Bank and its interpretation by the CJEU violated the proportionality requirements by not examining in a comprehensive and substantiated manner the economic policy effects that its practical implementation inevitably entails. However, this judgment is based on a manifestly erroneous interpretation of the relationship between the principles of proportionality and conferral and constitutes a concealed attempt to redefine the methods of interpretation of EU law and to impose the traditional perception of the constitutional court about the role of central banking and the existence of an absolute and inviolable separation between monetary and economic policy. At the same time, the constitutional court breaks its promise to exercise its ultra vires review in a cooperative spirit and fails to exhaust the institutional means that were available to it in order to resolve the matter in a legally appropriate and amicable manner that would not essentially amount to a precarious attempt to adjudicate economics.
