Thursday 13 September 2012

Brush Up Your German

The German Parliament must have access to all information feeding into decisions by the ESM on bail outs.  The Deputies must sanction such bail outs and thus need all the information covered by Article 34 of the ESM treaty; Article 34  defines what are the  'professional secrets' of the negotiators and  constrains  ministers, ex-ministers, present and past members of the ESM to uniformly keep mum.  The Court finds this  unacceptable. So we can all go to the Bundestag website and have a look at what went on.   That is if the Bundestag chooses to vote to reveal what it learns.  And they do, so far.

They published details on Ireland's bail outs, and on Spain's banks,  that both countries' political elites were hiding from their electorates.  As the Corriere della Sera notes, the Constitutional Court underlines that this is  the people's money, not governmental largesse, and its uses must be open to scrutiny.

Sooooo attractive, a codified constitution and a constitutional court to interpret and enforce it.  They were looking good in red, too.

4 comments:

dearieme said...

The arguments for a codified constitution seeem attractive, and then you look at the USA. Their Constitution is a fine thing, but has proven far too demanding for them to live up to. So SCOTUS just makes stuff up as it goes bowls merrily along, and anyway the politiciams just ignore the Constitution whenever things seem important enough to them.

a musician said...

'professional secrets' - those can be tricky...

hatfield girl said...

'Per mille ducati, io non haverei dato fuori i secreti ch'a dato questo frate'

for if I told you...

hatfield girl said...

'politicians just ignore the Constitution whenever things seem important enough to them.'

The Germans wouldn't have if their Court had said ESM is incompatible with the German basic law, Dearieme.