Economic Messianism and Constitutional Power in a 'German Europe': All Courts are Equal, But Some Courts are More Equal than Others

Abstract

Since the financial crisis there have been extraordinary efforts by the European Central Bank to protect the single currency, alongside pronouncements by European political elites that the Euro determines Europe’s fate and must be rescued at any cost. In its OMT reference, the German constitutional court challenges this emerging ‘Economic Messianism’ on the basis of a constitutional logic of the democratic Rechtsstaat. And yet, the German Court is also promoting an ordo-liberal logic of avoidance of moral hazard, fiscal competitiveness and austerity that undermines the project of European integration and erodes constitutional democracy in the debtor states. These tensions – between supranational economic integration, state sovereignty and domestic constitutionalism – reveal the depth of the constitutional disequilibrium in the EU, and also reflect broader contradictions in the development of late democratic capitalism.