Traduction de «Law on Constitution Courts » (Anglais → Français) :

We take note of today's judgement by the German Constitutional Court, in which it rejects challenges to the European Central Bank's Outright Monetary Transactions programme.

AO. whereas under the Fundamental Law the Constitutional Court’s powers of ex post review of the constitutionality of budget-related laws from a substantive point of view have been substantially limited to violations of an exhaustive list of rights, thus obstructing the review of constitutionality in cases of breaches of other fundamental rights such as the right to property, the right to a fair trial and the right not to be discriminated against;

AN. whereas under the Fundamental Law the Constitutional Court’s powers of ex post review of the constitutionality of budget-related laws from a substantive point of view have been substantially limited to violations of an exhaustive list of rights, thus obstructing the review of constitutionality in cases of breaches of other fundamental rights such as the right to property, the right to a fair trial and the right not to be discriminated against;

– to fully restore the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court as the supreme body of constitutional protection, and thus the primacy of the Fundamental Law, by removing from its text the limitations on the Constitutional Court’s power to review the constitutionality of any changes to the Fundamental Law, as well as the abolition of two decades of constitutional case law; to restore the right of the Constitutional Court to review all legislation without exception, with a view to counterbalancing parliamentary and executive actions and ensuring full judicial review; such a judicial and constitutional review may be exerted in different ...[+++]ways in different Member States, depending on the specificities of each national constitutional history, but once established, a Constitutional Court – like the Hungarian one, which after the fall of the communist regime has rapidly built a reputation among Supreme Courts in Europe – should not be subject to measures aimed at reducing its competences and thus undermining the rule of law;

15. Welcomes the introduction of a possibility for two new types of constitutional complaint to the Constitutional Court and understands that a democratic system that is founded on the rule of law does not necessarily need a constitutional court in order to function properly; recalls, however, Opinion No CDL-AD (2011)016 of the Venice Commission, which notes that in states that have opted for a constitutional court, this court should be entitled to assess the compliance of all laws ...[+++] with the human rights guaranteed in the constitution; considers, therefore, that the limitation of constitutional jurisdiction relating to the laws on the central budget and taxes weakens the institutional and procedural guarantees for the protection of a number of constitutional rights and for the control of the parliament's and the government's powers in the budgetary field;

Until a few years ago, the relationship between Community law, on the one hand, and national constitutional law, on the other, seemed largely to have been clarified: although the Community Treaties contain no explicit provisions governing the question of hierarchy, the European Court of Justice had consistently upheld, since its 1964 and 1970 judgments in the cases of Costa v. ENEL and Internationale Handelsgesellschaft, the absolute supremacy of both primary and secondary Community law over all provisions of national law - including constitutional law and the fundamental rights guaranteed thereby. While the Member States' national const ...[+++]itutional courts initially concurred with this legal viewpoint to a very large extent, recent years have seen the development of resistance, which has been spearheaded by the decidedly nationally-minded judgments, which are only partially supportive of integration, issued by the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Danish Supreme Court.