And Indeed It Was a (Failed) Nullification Crisis: The OMT Judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Winners and Losers of the Final Showdown in the OMT Case

Abstract

The aim of the present article is twofold. Firstly, to put the German Federal Constitutional Court (i.e., the BverfG) judgment into the context of a drawn-out conflict between the German Republic and the European Union regarding the setting up of a crisis management tool in the area of monetary policy (the SMP program in 2010 and the OMT program in 2012); secondly, to contest what the BVerfG claims in its judgment, namely that the European Court of Justice's judgment accepted the “requests” of the German Court issued in its preliminary reference. The opposite is true: the BVerfG had to bring its judgment into line with the Gauweiler judgment.