Germany: Constitutional Court fails to challenge controversial ECB bond-buying scheme

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected a challenge to the European Central Bank (ECB) bond-buying scheme, Tuesday, adding only minor limits to the as-of-yet unused Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme.
"Good day for the European integration. On the one hand, the ECB [European Central Bank] measures will stand and continue to stabilise the European Union, Monetary Union," Professor of Law at the University of Tübingen Law School, Martin Nettesheim, said.
Some 35,000 critics of the OMT scheme, introduced by the ECB's Chairman Mario Draghi in 2012 during the financial crisis, brought the case to the German court, stating that it stripped German parliament of the ability to make its own decisions on eurozone financial issues.
The OMT scheme allowed the European bank to buy eurozone state bonds on markets in a bid to stop countries from entering bankruptcy, but was quickly criticised for allegedly exceeding the ECB's mandate.
The German court, however, ruled that the OMT programme had not broken German law, calling only for further government monitoring of the scheme, while placing small limits on the German central bank's involvement with bond-buying plan.