¿Karlsruhe über alles? La insoportable pesadez del juez constitucional alemán (sobre la sentencia del zweiter senat del tribunal constitucional federal alemán del 5 de mayo de 2020 relativa al programa PSPP del banco central europeo)

The judgment of 5 May 2020 of the Zweiter Senat of the Bundesverfassungsgericht is manifestly inappropriate from a legal point of view as it expresses the German constitutional judge’s claim to assess the legality of the ECB’s decisions and the correctness of reasoning of the CJEU in Weiss. The judges are using the principle of proportionality to assess the correct application of the principle of conferral in a way that is simply impossible to follow and thus objectively arbitrary. Furthermore, the judges make a very questionable use of the principle of democracy and of economic analysis in assessing the correctness of the ECB’s PSPP program. The judgement is extremely dangerous by ultimately questioning the application of EU law in a Member State and encourages other courts and Member States’ governments to do the same. The judges’ reasoning is the glaring demonstration of a form of “cultural bullying” which particularly emerges in the reasoning carried out on proportionality.