German Euro Critics Say Top Court Has to Await European Ruling

A group of German plaintiffs led by Professor Markus Kerber said it filed a complaint asking the country’s highest court to await a European Court of Justice ruling on the euro region’s future permanent financial backstop before issuing its own opinion.

Irish lawmaker Thomas Pringle had challenged legislation on the backstop, the European Stability Mechanism, and was referred to the European Court of Justice after Ireland’s Supreme Court last month ruled that it can’t block the government from ratifying domestic legislation on the ESM.

“As long as the European Court of Justice hasn’t taken a final decision on the incompatibility of these treaties, neither the Federal Constitutional Court nor the Federal President must take a decision,” the group led by Kerber said in a statement on its Internet site. Kerber, an economics professor at Berlin’s Free University, is founder of the euro-critical Europolis group.

Markets are awaiting the establishment of the 500 billion- euro ($617 billion) ESM, which is on hold pending a decision by Germany’s top court, set for Sept. 12.

Kerber, who proposes the introduction of a so-called guldenmark in euro countries running current-account surpluses, says Germany’s public finances could be crushed by debt as high as 3.7 trillion euros as a result of commitments toward troubled euro countries.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rainer Buergin in Berlin at rbuergin1@bloomberg.net; Janhenrik Forster in Frankfurt at jforster14@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net