Abstract
Few decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU have provoked more diverse, and more critical, reactions than its two decisions on the legality of the ECB’s asset purchase programmes, Gauweiler and Weiss. Few are of greater importance, given that unprecedented exogenous shocks are likely to require continued interventions by the ECB to stabilise the Eurozone for some time to come. In spite of an extensive literature, there is no established view on whether the ECB’s asset purchase programmes are legal. We argue that it is possible rationally to disagree about many of the concepts at issue in the two cases. We therefore propose to test the decisions solely against the benchmarks of consistency and coherence and show that they meet neither benchmark. The article explores the reasons for the Court’s failure to deliver rationally defensible judgments and discusses implications for the further development of the legal framework governing unconventional monetary policy measures.
Published Version
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