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- Israel’s judicial reform: A country on the brink of a constitutional crisis? • FRANCE 24 English FRANCE 24 English
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Tag Archives: constitutional
WV Senate, House cast aside constitutional rule, ram through 35 bills to passage on first day of sudden special session – Charleston Gazette-Mail
- WV Senate, House cast aside constitutional rule, ram through 35 bills to passage on first day of sudden special session Charleston Gazette-Mail
- Justice calls WV Legislature into special session | News Huntington Herald Dispatch
- Special session continues as lawmakers advance bills spending millions of dollars of surplus funds West Virginia MetroNews
- Gov. Justice issues proclamation calling for Special Session of the West Virginia Legislature today at 4 p.m. Governor Jim Justice
- Gazette-Mail editorial: Rushing to fix mistakes while surely making more Charleston Gazette-Mail
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Kais Saied constitutional referendum could dismantle Tunisia democracy
Except now, accompanied by security and greeted by a swarming crowd, he was their president. “I took a selfie like a friend would have. Frankly, it was pretty special.”
For Chihaoui, that encounter bolstered his belief, one shared among many of the president’s supporters, that Saied is one of them. He will vote “yes” Monday in a controversial referendum on a new constitution that Saied insists will lead Tunisia to a more prosperous future.
Many other Tunisians believe the opposite will come true. They say Saied has spent the past year executing a drawn-out power grab and that his proposed constitution, published just weeks ago, was conceived through an illegitimate process. They say the referendum will only further cement his one-man rule and destroy the progress made since the country’s 2011 revolution overthrew dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and kicked off the Arab Spring across the Middle East.
With no minimum participation rate required and many of Saied’s opponents boycotting the process to avoid lending it credence, the referendum is widely expected to pass. His opponents criticized his decision to speak publicly about the referendum Monday in what they decried as a blatant violation of election silence rules. By late Monday night, election officials said turnout surpassed 27 percent, a higher showing than what many observers expected.
The vote comes one year to the day since Saied dismissed parliament and fired his prime minister, suddenly dividing the country between those who celebrated his decision as necessary to end an ongoing political crisis and those who decried it as a coup that threatened the survival of the only democracy to have come out of the Arab Spring.
The move, which came amid a deadly surge of coronavirus cases and political deadlock between the president and a divided parliament, was initially widely celebrated in Tunisia and threw Saied, a man who once seemed an unlikely candidate to wield such immense political power, into the spotlight.
His stilted manner of speech and insistence on using formal Arabic rather than the Tunisian dialect have earned him the nickname “RoboCop.” Even some of his supporters, including Chihaoui, acknowledge he lacks the typical charisma and gregariousness that so often accompanies a successful political figure.
Still, he ran for president at a moment when Tunisians, tired of a decade of failure to improve the economy and politicians who did not deliver on their promises, welcomed his status as a relative outsider in the political system and a perception of his trustworthiness. He won 73 percent of the vote.
He became immensely popular last summer with those who saw his drastic moves to suspend parliament as necessary to weed out corrupt or ineffectual officials, including in the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, once a dominant force in the government.
But for some of those supporters, the popularity was short-lived. Now the country, submerged in a worsening economic crisis and facing widespread political division, is grappling with what many of his onetime supporters see as the consequences of their earlier misconception.
“He passed right under everyone’s nose,” said Abderraouf Betbaieb, a retired diplomat who has known Saied for decades and was part of his inner circle before quitting in 2020. “He plunged the country into crisis.”
Lawyer and politician Samia Abbou was never enthralled by Saied but was among those who applauded his unconventional intervention last July, hoping it would mark a fresh start for the country’s democracy.
But by September, when Saied announced an extension of the state of emergency and a further expansion of his powers, she felt he had veered too far off-script. Then, in December, he proclaimed that parliament would remain suspended until after a July referendum. Finally in March, he said parliament had been dissolved and has since replaced the members of the independent electoral commission with his appointees.
Now, she said, she feels certain the new constitution is just laying the groundwork for a “dictatorship.” “I cannot regret something that needed to happen,” she said of her support for his initial decision last July. But what came next “was done in bad faith. It was not honest.”
“He succeeded in dividing the people in two,” she said. “We have never lived through this, even under the regime of Ben Ali,” referring to the dictator ousted in 2011. “We have become fanatics, either for or against. People no longer smile together, even in a single family.”
Even the expert whom Saied tasked with writing the new constitution is among those now publicly decrying the president and boycotting the Monday vote, saying it would be an ethical “betrayal” for him to participate.
Sadok Belaid, the former dean of Tunis University’s law school who taught Saied as a young man, agreed this spring to lead the consultative commission responsible for crafting the new legal document. He had known Saied for decades, he said, and described him as having been “very affable, very nice, very modest.”
For weeks, Belaid recalled, he worked tirelessly on the project. The day after he submitted his completed version of the new constitution, he said, he checked into the hospital for an operation he had postponed to write the document.
Later that day, in his hospital bed and still under the effects of anesthesia, he said Saied visited him and handed him a pile of papers he described as a modified version of his work.
It was not until the president left that Belaid, who is in his 80s, realized he was holding an entirely different version of the constitution, one that Saied appeared to have largely written himself. The new version hands Saied further powers and reduces the influence of parliament, among other changes widely condemned by his opponents.
“It is a true comedy” that “ends badly,” Belaid said. “The reality is that the president used this prestige he has in the eyes of the population to pass a text that does not respond to the needs or demands of the people but to his own intentions.”
Back at the cafe, Chihaoui, said it was indeed Saied’s reputation as someone “cultivated” that drew him toward his candidacy. Still, in a Tunisia racked by political infighting, “I thought it was a dream.” He said, “A man of the people becoming president? It was not too logical.” Now that Saied is in power, he said, he supports any decision the president may make. “Everything he does is for the people.”
Just outside the cafe, Sami bin Mohamed, 42, a salesman, expressed a much less optimistic opinion. Smoking a cigarette, he bemoaned the worsening economic situation and said he will boycott the referendum. “Any president works for his own good,” he said. In poorer neighborhoods, he added, “everyone is planning to leave illegally. I don’t think it is possible to fix stuff around here.”
Downtown on Saturday, a small crowd gathered to protest the referendum and voice their support for the Ennahda Party. “We are here because Mr. Kais Saied is doing a coup in Tunisia,” said Fathia Azaiz, 63. “He is changing everything,” she said. “The president is isolating himself and not being democratic.”
Nearby, Kawthar Guettiti, 36, a graphic designer, was walking with her 6-year-old daughter, who held a small Tunisian flag. She will be voting “yes” on Monday, she said, because she trusts that Saied intends to put the country on a sturdier path for her daughter’s future. “He has a background in law. He knows very well what he is doing. He won’t be a dictator any more than the others,” she said.
Chile’s Constitutional Assembly presents proposal for new constitution to Chilean president
Chileans will decide whether to adopt or reject the constitution in a nationwide plebiscite on September 4.
“I know, and all of Chile is conscious that this hasn’t been easy. And it’s that, dear compatriots, democracy isn’t easy,” Boric said after receiving a copy of the draft document.
“Regardless of the legitimate differences that may exist regarding the content of the text which will be debated in the next months, there is something that all Chileans have to be proud about — that in the moment of the most profound political, institutional and social crisis that our homeland has lived through in decades, Chileans opted for more democracy, not less,” he said.
The proposed constitution marks a departure from country’s existing constitution, which was written under the influence of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman´s neoliberal model. Despite many amendments, a majority of Chileans blame it for the country´s stark inequalities.
The proposed new constitution emphasizes social and ecological factors, enshrines the rights of Chile’s indigenous peoples and envisages a new national healthcare system.
The process towards potentially replacing the constitution inherited from the late General Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled the country from 1973 to 1990, was sparked by a metro fare increase three years ago.
Massive protests and riots throughout the country in the fall of 2019 forced then-president Sebastián Piñera to agree to a referendum on rewriting the constitution.
In October 2020, more than 78% of Chilean voters approved the constitutional change and in June 2021, they cast their ballots again to pick the members for a constituent assembly.
The center-left and right-wing coalitions that have shared power since the return to democracy in 1990 both took a serious blow, obtaining only 16% and 24% of seats in the assembly respectively.
Independents and newcomers from left-wing political parties and social movements in contrast had their hour of glory, gathering 60% of the votes.
Now the country is preparing to vote on the constitution they drew up, which could ring in widespread changes in Chilean society.
U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, ends constitutional right to abortion
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that will dramatically change life for millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a deeply polarized country.
The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law without taking the additional step of erasing the Roe precedent altogether.
The reverberations of the ruling will be felt far beyond the court’s high-security confines – potentially reshaping the battlefield in November’s elections to determine whether Biden’s fellow Democrats retain control of Congress and signaling a new openness by the justices to change other long-recognized rights.
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The decision will also intensify debate over the legitimacy of the court, once an unassailable cornerstone of the American democratic system but increasingly under scrutiny for its more aggressively conservative decisions on a range of issues.
The ruling restored the ability of states to ban abortion. Twenty-six states are either certain or considered likely to ban abortion. Mississippi is among 13 states with so-called trigger laws to ban abortion with Roe overturned. (For related graphic click https://tmsnrt.rs/3Njv3Cw)
In a concurring opinion that raised concerns the justices might roll back other rights, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider past rulings protecting the right to contraception, legalizing gay marriage nationwide, and invalidating state laws banning gay sex.
The justices, in the ruling written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, held that the Roe decision that allowed abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb – which occurs between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy – was wrongly decided because the U.S. Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.
Women with unwanted pregnancies in large swathes of America now may face the choice of traveling to another state where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, appeared to nix an idea advocated by some anti-abortion advocates that the next step is for the court to declare that the Constitution outlaws abortion. “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Kavanaugh also said that the ruling does not let states bar residents from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion, or retroactively punish people for prior abortions.
‘SAD DAY’
Biden condemned the ruling as taking an “extreme and dangerous path.”
“It’s a sad day for the court and for the country,” Biden said at the White House. “The court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans.”
Empowering states to ban abortion makes the United States an outlier among developed nations on protecting reproductive rights, the Democratic president added.
Biden urged Congress to pass a law protecting abortion rights, an unlikely proposition given its partisan divisions. Biden said his administration will protect women’s access to medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration including pills for contraception and medication abortion, while also combating efforts to restrict women from traveling to other states to obtain abortions.
Britain, France and some other nations called the ruling a step backward, although the Vatican praised it, saying it challenged the world to reflect on life issues. read more
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decision was “a loss for women everywhere”. “Watching the removal of a woman’s fundamental right to make decisions over their own body is incredibly upsetting,” she said in a statement.
Anti-abortion demonstrators celebrate outside the United States Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v Women’s Health Organization abortion case, overturning the landmark Roe v Wade abortion decision in Washington, U.S., June 24, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
U.S. companies including Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), AT&T and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said they will cover employees’ expenses if they now have to travel for abortion services. read more
‘DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES’
A draft version of Alito’s ruling indicating the court was ready to overturn Roe was leaked in May, igniting a political firestorm. Friday’s ruling largely tracked this leaked draft.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote in the ruling.
Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access. Friday’s ruling overturned the Casey decision as well.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division,” Alito added.
The court’s three liberal justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – issued a jointly authored dissent.
“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” they wrote.
As a result of Friday’s ruling, “from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” the liberal justices added.
The ruling empowered states to ban abortion just a day after the court’s conservative majority issued another decision limiting the ability of states to enact gun restrictions. read more
The abortion and gun rulings illustrated the polarization in America on a range of issues, also including race and voting rights.
Overturning Roe was long a goal of Christian conservatives and many Republican officeholders, including former President Donald Trump, who as a candidate in 2016 promised to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would reverse Roe. During his term he named three to the bench, all of whom joined the majority in the ruling.
Asked in a Fox News interview whether he deserved some credit for the ruling, Trump said: “God made the decision.”
Crowds gathered outside the courthouse, surrounded by a tall security fence. Anti-abortion activists erupted in cheers after the ruling, while some abortion rights supporters were in tears.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Emma Craig, 36, of Pro Life San Francisco. “Abortion is the biggest tragedy of our generation and in 50 years we’ll look back at the 50 years we’ve been under Roe v. Wade with shame.”
Hours later, protesters angered by the decision still gathered outside the court, as did crowds in cities from coast to coast including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle.
House of Representatives Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, denounced the decision, saying that a “Republican-controlled Supreme Court” has achieved that party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”
The number of U.S. abortions increased by 8% during the three years ending in 2020, reversing a 30-year trend of declining numbers, according to data released on June 15 by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. read more
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Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Katanga Johnson and Rose Horowitch; Writing by Lawrence Hurley and Ross Colvin; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone, Daniel Wallis and Michael Perry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Georgia Gov. signs major constitutional carry bill into law
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a bill into law Tuesday removing the license and background check requirements for gun owners to carry a firearm in public, drawing high praise from gun owners in the state.
Joining supporters outside Gable Sporting Goods in Douglasville on Tuesday, the Republican governor celebrated the new law, saying it will ensure citizens’ rights to protect themselves in public, Fox 5 of Atlanta reported.
GEORGIA SET TO BECOME 25TH STATE WITH ‘CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY’ LAW IN MAJOR WIN FOR GUN-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Mason Mega Rail Station at the Garden City Port Terminal on November 12, 2021, in Garden City, Georgia.
(Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
“SB 319 makes sure that law-abiding Georgians — law-abiding Georgians, including our daughters and your family too — can protect themselves without having the permission of the state government. The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government,” Kemp said. “HB 218 ensures that individuals who are licensed to carry in another state are also authorized to do so here in Georgia.”
OHIO GOV DEWINE SIGNS BILL ALLOWING PEOPLE TO CARRY CONCEALED FIREARMS WITHOUT A PERMIT
Dubbed the “Constitutional Carry Act,” the new law cleared both chambers of the state legislature by the beginning of April, to the high praise of Second Amendment advocates in the state — and across the country.
“This isn’t a bill that’s going to create more crime. This is allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a weapon without a license in Georgia,” said state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, a Republican, Fox 5 reported.
ALABAMA GOV. IVEY SIGNS ‘CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY’ BILL, REPEALS NEED FOR PERMIT TO CARRY CONCEALED PISTOL
On Tuesday, Kemp also signed into law legislation that recognizes and accepts other states’ concealed carry permits in Georgia.
Gov. Brian Kemp hands a pen to Rep. Mandi Ballinger after he signed a bill which will allow permit less carry at a sporting goods store in Douglasville, Ga., Tuesday, April 12, 2022. (Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Critics swiftly slammed both new laws.
“This legislation will potentially allow individuals with a criminal history who purchase a gun through a private sale to legally carry a hidden, loaded weapon in our communities,” said state Rep. Kimberly Alexander, a Democrat, according to the report.
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The bill also drew some criticism from Kemp’s Trump-backed primary gubernatorial opponent, former Sen. David Perdue, who applauded the bill’s signing but criticized Kemp for taking “four years” to get it signed.
(David Perdue and Brian Kemp, Reuters)
Kazakh president says constitutional order mostly restored
ALMATY, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Security forces appeared to be in control of the streets of Kazakhstan’s main city Almaty on Friday morning and the president said constitutional order had mostly been restored, a day after Russia sent troops to put down a countrywide uprising.
However, fresh gunshots could be heard in the morning near the city’s central square, where troops and protesters had battled through much of the previous day.
Dozens of people have been killed in clashes on the streets and protesters have torched and ransacked public buildings in several cities in the worst violence in the Central Asian state’s 30 years of independence.
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Demonstrations that began as a response to a fuel price hike have swelled into a broad movement against the government and ex-leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, the longest-serving ruler of any former Soviet state.
He stepped down as president three years ago but his family is widely believed to have retained power.
Nazarbayev’s hand-picked successor, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, called in Russian paratroopers on Thursday as part of a force from former Soviet states to help put down the uprising, which he has described as a revolt by foreign-trained militants.
“An anti-terrorist operation has been launched. The forces of law and order are working hard. Constitutional order has largely been restored in all regions of the country,” Tokayev said in a statement.
“Local authorities are in control of the situation. But terrorists are still using weapons and damaging the property of citizens. Therefore, counter-terrorist actions should be continued until the militants are completely eliminated.”
TROOPS IN ALMATY
The interior ministry said 26 “armed criminals” had been “liquidated” and more than 3,000 detained, while 18 police and national guard servicemembers had been killed since the start of the protests. read more
On Friday morning, Reuters correspondents saw armoured personal carriers and troops in the main square of Almaty.
A few hundred metres away, a dead body lay in a heavily damaged civilian car. In another part of the city, an ammunition shop had been ransacked. Military vehicles and about 100 people in military uniforms had also taken positions at another square in Almaty.
Widespread unrest has been reported in a number of other cities across the vast country of 19 million people. The internet has been shut off since Wednesday, making it difficult to determine the full extent of the violence.
The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization said its peacekeeping force from former Soviet states would number about 2,500 and would stay in Kazakhstan for a few days or weeks.
Tokayev’s administration said the force was still arriving and had not been engaged in combat or the “elimination of militants”.
The violence has been unprecedented in a country ruled firmly for decades by Nazarbayev, who was the last Soviet-era Communist Party boss still in powerin an ex-Soviet state when he passed the presidency on to Tokayev in 2019.
Nazarbayev has not been seen or heard from since the protests began. Tokayev has sought to distance himself from his predecessor, removing Nazarbayev and his nephew from security posts since the protests began.
Tokayev’s administration said the identity of the detained militants was being established, and the possibility of them belonging to an extremist organisation being investigated.
The president will address the nation on Friday, his administration said, asking people in Almaty to limit their travelling around the city while the “search for the remaining hiding bandits is under way.”
Kazakhstan is a major oil producer and the world’s top producer of uranium.
Oil output at its top field, Tengiz, was reduced on Thursday, the field’s operator Chevron (CVX.N) said, as some contractors disrupted train lines in support of the protests. Global oil prices have risen and the price of uranium has jumped sharply since the clashes began. read more
The country also accounts for close to a fifth of global bitcoin “mining”, the electricity-intensive process of recording cryptocurrency transactions, and since the internet was shut down, computing power of bitcoin’s global network has fallen. L4N2TM22L
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Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov, Tamara Vaal, Mariya Gordeyeva and Pavel Mikheyev; writing by Polina Devitt; editing by Kim Coghill and Michael Perry and John Stonestreet
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Germany constitutional court puts EU covid funds on hold
This photo taken on November 12, 2020, shows stocked up chairs inside a closed restaurant on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON — The European Union’s much-needed coronavirus stimulus plan has hit a stumbling block after the German constitutional court raised questions about how the new debt is being taken on.
The EU’s 27 nations agreed in July to tap financial markets via the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, and raise 750 billion euros ($883 billion) to tackle the economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus. It was described at the time as a “Hamiltonian moment” for the bloc, in reference to the deal struck by U.S. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton to convert previous debts into joint obligations of the federal union.
Though EU countries share many political decisions, each nation has full control over its fiscal arrangements. Agreeing to take on new debt proved controversial for more fiscally-conservative nations, who worry their taxpayers might face a higher bill as a result.
This was the case in the Netherlands, for example, but Prime Minister Mark Rutte stressed at the time the unique nature of the deal: it is meant to be a one-off event to deal with an unprecedented and severe economic shock across the region.
But this argument has not convinced every EU-sceptic.
A group in Germany, called the Citizens’ Will Alliance, complained to the country’s constitutional court that the European treaties do not allow the bloc to take on debt jointly. As a result, the German court on Friday stopped a law that would have paved the way for the European Commission to raise the funds. The German judges said they had to first rule on a motion for an interim injunction on the law.
“We are aware that the Recovery Fund is a political project already decided upon. However, given the considerable risks involved, the federal government should ensure that borrowing at the EU level and a circumvention of the fiscal rules does not become a permanent solution,” the German constitutional court said on Friday.
It comes despite 478 out of 645 German lawmakers giving the ratification of the law the greenlight last week.
Practical consequences
The European Commission cannot tap financial markets for the funds before all the member states have legislated in favour of the move. As many as 22 of the 27 EU nations have done so or are due to conclude the process next month. Austria, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands have not yet confirmed when they will vote, and Germany is now under a cloud of uncertainty.
“Unless the issue is resolved fast and in favour of the law which both houses of the German parliament had approved with broad majorities beforehand, pay-outs from the fund could thus be delayed or even be at risk,” Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Berenberg said in a note on Monday.
The European Commission wants to start raising funds this summer and make them available to member states in the second half of 2021 — a year after the initial agreement.
Countries severely hit by the pandemic, such as Italy and Spain, are desperately waiting for the fresh cash so they can rebuild their economies faster. And the recovery funds have become even more important as nations across Europe battle against a third wave of infections and impose stricter lockdowns.
“Although the German Court case could generate some noise, we consider it unlikely that it will ultimately thwart the EU’s common fiscal response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Schmieding said.
He believes that a delay in pay-outs “would be unfortunate,” but as long as markets expect the money to come through at some point, borrowing rates for EU nations should remain low.
A long-term headache
There is another issue at play, however.
This is not the first time that the German constitutional court has raised questions about what it perceives as risky EU integration. In May of last year, the same court ruled that parts of the European Central Bank’s government bond purchasing program were illegal under German law.
“The risk of a bigger battle looms because Friday’s motion reflects a bigger institutional problem for Germany and for Europe,” Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit, said in a note on Sunday.
He said the constitutional court could chose “a big fight with Germany’s other branches of the state” or with the ECB once again, this time over its Covid stimulus program.