Italienische Reaktionen auf das Urteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts vom 5. Mai 2020 zum Public Sector Purchase Programme (»PSPP«)

The essay examines the main comments by the Italian legal doctrine concerning the judgment of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) of 5 May 2020 that declared the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 11 December 2018 (Weiss and others C-493 / 17) to be ultra vires. The European court, in contrast to the Bundesverfassungsgericht, had found the Public Sector Asset Purchase Programme, or 'PSPP', resolved by the European Central Bank in 2015 in exercising its competences with regard to monetary policy, to be in compliance with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The appraisal of the Bundesverfassungsgerichts' ruling in the Italian legal doctrine has been negative for the most part as it seems to perceive the European order mainly as an inter-state organisation based on the delegation of limited powers and has imposed its own standard of application of the principle of proportionality on the Court of Justice. The essay parallels the similar approach of the Italian Constitutional Court (Corte Costituzionale), according to which EU law, based on Article 11 of the Italian Constitution, must respect the principles of the Italian constitutional order and the inalienable rights of the individual (Taricco case 2018).