Principio della stabilità dei prezzi e sistema delle competenze UE: la distinzione fra politica monetaria e politica economica nella giurisprudenza della Corte di Giustizia

di Elia Cremona

SOMMARIO: 1. Una coppia di princìpi e lo spazio del problema. – 2. Il processo di “enlargement of functions” della BCE. – 3. La distinzione tra politica economica e politica monetaria nella giurisprudenza della Corte di giustizia e del Bundesverfassungsgericht. – 3.1. Il caso Pringle: un criterio riduttivo e flessibile per la distinzione tra politica economica e monetaria. – 3.2. Il caso Gauweiler: il programma OMT come misura non convenzionale di politica ‘meramente monetaria’. – 3.3 Il caso Weiss: la compatibilità del Public Sector Purchase Programme con il diritto dei Trattati. – 3.4. La sentenza del Bundesverfassungsgericht del 5 maggio 2020: dal dialogo tra le Corti al monologo tedesco. 4. – Osservazioni di sintesi e conclusioni.

In the recent past, the link between the principle of maintaining price stability, in the activity of the ECB and the ESCB, and the principle of conferral has been the core of a broad debate on the means and aims of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
In particular, the heart of the debate concerned the validity of the financial assistance programmes launched within the Eurogroup, as well as the acts with which the ECB has reacted to the financial and sovereign debt crisis since 2011. The so-called non-standard measures, put in place by the ECB in order to preserve the monetary transmission mechanism, have, however, had an effect in the field of economic policy. Thus, for some – above all, the Bundesverfassungsgericht – the intervention of the ECB exceeded its competences with a series of ultra vires acts.
The issue of the correct distinction between economic and monetary policy has thus been raised and petitions have multiplied for a definitive actio finium regundorum between the monetary policy competences attributed to the EU, and in particular to the ECB, and those of economic policy which remain the responsibility of the Member States, except for the “coordination” provided for by the Treaties.
The contribution therefore reconstructs both the process of “enlargement of functions” of the ECB and the parallel process of interpretation of the Treaties followed by the Court of Justice, most recently pressed by the German Federal Constitutional Court.
In conclusion, it makes some critical reflections on the persistent distinction between economic and monetary policy, on the role taken on and consolidated by the ECB in the framework of EMU and finally on the perspectives that open up in the fields of the two policies in the contrast of the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.