{"id":13726,"date":"2014-04-15T09:28:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T09:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13726"},"modified":"2014-04-15T11:20:23","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T11:20:23","slug":"german-high-court-ruling-would-threaten-merkel-us-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13726","title":{"rendered":"German High Court ruling would threaten Merkel, US influence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Angela<\/a>
Angela Merkel, struggling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Much like the US Supreme Court, upon which Germany’s highest court was partially modeled after World War II, the German Federal Constitutional Court is the final interpreter of constitutional law. Accordingly, it has the last word on the legality of any treaties, agreements or actions undertaken by Germany at the European level.<\/p>\n

The court already has challenged German involvement in some of the more creative legal acrobatics undertaken by the European Union. These include the establishment of the EU emergency bond-buying plan known as the Outright Monetary Transactions program. In that case, the German Federal Constitutional Court proceeded with caution and referred the case to the European Court of Justice. But there are strong indications that it could be more aggressive in future cases. A rejection of government moves in a landmark case, such as one involving potential German participation in a strengthened quantitative easing program, could derail the American project for Europe.<\/p>\n

Economic policy is not the only issue on which the court has proven to be a thorn in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s side. German electoral law currently requires a party to win a minimum of 5 percent of the national vote to enter the national parliament, a measure designed to keep small radical parties out of an already relatively fragmented parliament. Berlin used to apply a similar threshold to German parties seeking access to the European Parliament. The German constitutional court recently struck down this requirement, and some politicians fear it could soon do the same for German federal elections. The current surge in popularity of nationalist parties heretofore excluded from the legislature may jeopardize the existence of a pro-American government in Berlin, the only real decision-making body to take NATO forward.<\/p>\n

The court’s current course of action poses an existential threat to Merkel’s political career and to Germany’s political affiliation. Should the court so rule, Germany could rapidly lose its place as the Continent’s strongman, being condemned instead to internal paralysis as it watches Europe slowly turn east.<\/p>\n

As with most of the really important developments in Europe, the battle between the court and the German government will be drawn out and will remain out of the public eye for now. Still, the very existence of open discussions about reducing the power of one of the most trusted and impartial institutions in Germany testifies to how seriously the chancellor’s office takes the danger of the fallout from the court’s potential ruling.<\/p>\n

The European Parliament approved Tuesday the last elements of a new regulatory system meant to prevent failing banks from ever again driving EU member states into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

With banking union draft passed by a very large majority, “we now have in place a true European system to supervise the eurozone banks and deal with any future failures,” EU Financial Markets Commissioner Michel Barnier said.<\/p>\n

Source: Stratfor<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much like the US Supreme Court, upon which Germany’s highest court was partially modeled after World War II, the German Federal Constitutional Court is the final interpreter of constitutional law. Accordingly, it has the last word on the legality of any treaties, agreements or actions undertaken by Germany at the European level. The court already … Continue reading “German High Court ruling would threaten Merkel, US influence”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[8821,51,8822,1638],"class_list":["post-13726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-german-federal-constitutional-court","tag-germany","tag-nato-merkel","tag-us"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/merkelski.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13729,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13726\/revisions\/13729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}