What Future for the Eurozone After Karlsruhe?

Abstract

The paper analyzes the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court rendered on 5 May2020 (2 BvR 859/15,2 BvR 980/16,2 BvR2006/15,2 BvR 1651/15), wereby the latter heavily criticized the "democratic" legitimacy of the Public Sector Purchase Program of the European Central Bank (aimed, by purchasing negotiable debt securities issued by governments, public agencies and international institutions located in the euro area, to support the economy of the Member States and to increase the eurozone's inflation rate up to 2%), de facto disapplying the judgment of the CGEU of 11 December 2018, by which that Program had been instead previously "validated." The author places the decision in the context of the long-standing and conflicting relations, on the one hand, between Member States and European institutions and, on the other hand, between national constitutional courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union, outlining the possible repercussions of the decision on a legal, economic, political and institutional level and, ultimately, on the very survival of the eurozone.