Former German Supreme Judge Condemns EU Super-Bailout

May 21, 2010 (LPAC)—In an op-ed in Wiesbadener Kurier yesterday, headlined "Without Democratic Legitimacy," Hans-Joachim Jentsch (CDU), a former judge on the Constitutional Court (1996-2005), attacks the super-bailout and its planned parliamentary passage today, as "opening the flood-gates, which we will not be able to shut again," as an open violation of the EU's no-bailout clause. And, worst of all, it is a usurpation of power by the EU institutions at the expense of national sovereignty—as the Lisbon Treaty ruling of the Constitutional Court has pointed out very clearly. "What is being done with the justification of the European stability mechanism, is nothing other than the transfer of sovereignty from the nation-states to the European Union, in bypassing of the European treaties, which means in a cold coup."

Jentsch in particular attacks EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso for his statement that "the euro will be defended, no matter what the price is," calling it an "open disregard of existing treaties and of democratic legitimacy. That is irresponsible."

More evidence that resistance against the bailout is strong at the highest echelons of the Christian Democrats, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel cannot be sure of all of her party members voting for the bailout in the national parliament (Bundestag) on May 21, were critical remarks by none other than Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag, who complained about the haste with which the deliberations on the German contribution to the EU financial umbrella are being conducted in the Bundestag. In an interview with Kˆlner Stadtanzeiger, Lammert said, that "the narrow timing" would have to be examined "self-critically." The government, which has to negotiate and act in such situations, could not put into effect the agreements, which have to be decided upon, if the Bundestag does not cooperate. In the case of the rescue package for Greece, the Bundestag did "recognizably" insist on corrections in the form of precise conditions and supplements, which he (Lammert) had demanded as a precondition for his vote.