Poland praises Karlsruhe judge for ECB judgment

The ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on the ECB’s government bond purchases is causing Brussels turmoil. But the Karlsruhe judges not only receive criticism but also praise – of all things from neighboring Poland.

After its controversial judgment on the European Central Bank, the German Federal Constitutional Court received support from Poland. The decision of the Karlsruhe judges was “one of the most important judgments in the history of the European Union”, wrote the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a message to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” (FAS).

It may have been saying for the first time in this clarity: “The treaties are created by the Member States and they determine where the competence limits lie for the EU institutions.” Background of this statement: The national conservative PiS government has been restructuring the judiciary for years. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) intervened several times and found that some of the reforms violated EU law.

The Federal Constitutional Court criticized the billion-dollar government bond purchases by the ECB on Tuesday, thereby opposing for the first time a judgment of the ECJ. Unlike the ECJ, the Karlsruhe judges decided that the central bank had overstretched its mandate. They called the ECJ judgment “objectively arbitrary” and “methodologically no longer justifiable”.