“Neutralità va cercando, ch’è sì cara”! Il Tribunale costituzionale tedesco contro la politicità dei programmi di quantitative easing della BCE

In the Weiss case the BVerG resoundingly disproved the ECJ on the point of proportionality of the Public Sector Purchase Programme launched by the ECB in 2015. For the BVerG, this programme would overflow from monetary policy into economic policy, reserved to Member States. While monetary policy is conferred by the Treaties to the technical and non-discretionary intervention of the ECB, economic policies must remain within the realm of democratic choices of Member States. The article critically comments on the ordoliberal approach of the BVerG, highlighting how each type of monetary policy has an impact on economic policy, being peculiar to the German point of view (and to its satellites States) that only restrictive monetary policy can be said to be “neutral”. BVerG’s refusal to accept the ECJ’s verdict on the boundaries of the ECB “functional sovereignty” also disproves those irenic theories about post-modern and functional sovereignty that allegedly characterise EU supranationality. Finally, the conflict between BVerG and EU Institutions is read through the lens of that economic doctrine which sees the ECB as the regulator of conflicts between strong and weak capitals, in a context of progressive «centralisation of capital» in the Eurozone.