 Well, good afternoon everyone. It's wonderful to have so many of you at this cells lunchtime seminar. This is the first time we've done a lunchtime seminar on a webinar and all of us are trying to learn how to use and master the technology. If anything goes wrong, it's obviously entirely our fault, but we are trying and I hope you'll bear with us if there are some glitches. I would like to start by saying thank you for giving up your lunchtime to come and hear this webinar. We're going to have three presentations of about 10 minutes each. First of all, from Olivia Henareos, my wonderful colleague from Cambridge, then from Marcus Gehring, also my wonderful colleague here at Cambridge, and then from Michael Bible, who was also at Cambridge until he went for a wonderful trip to Vienna and is currently at the university there. I'm not going to give lengthy introductions to them all because they're all excellent. In terms of logistics, once they have talked for 10 minutes each, so half an hour will open the floor to questions. There is a Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. And so if you want to submit questions in the course of the presentations, please do so. And my colleague, Mohammed Moussa, will help look at the questions and try and sort them in some sort of order, and then we'll pass them on to the relevant panelists afterwards. Dan Bates, who is acting in the background, is going to try and coordinate this whole operation. So this judgment, clearly extremely important, that's why so many of you have signed up to it. And I think it raises a number of issues for us all. First of all, as lawyers, what about the judgment? Is the judgment itself? Is it a good one? Is it coherent? Is it, dare I say, comprehensible? Does it make economic sense? What were they trying to do? What's the court actually want the ECB to do as a result? But I suspect, actually, the implications of the judgment are more of an issue, first and foremost, for the ECB. What is it going to do in response to this ruling, but also what does it mean for its own independence? What's the commission going to do? Is the commission really going to start enforcement proceedings against Germany in the light of this judgment? Will that make matters worse? And then, of course, the Court of Justice. How much damage has this judgment done to the Court of Justice? How should it respond? Should it be thinking about setting up some sort of judicial network across the EU where there is much more formal consultation of these constitutional courts to be feeling very uncomfortable about all of this? And what about the implications for EU law itself? What's going to be the fate of constitutional pluralism? Has EU law been challenged? And what does that mean for member states who are already really very uncomfortable about EU law and about what the Court of Justice is saying about their own systems, and what is going to be Poland and Hungary? Now, of course, we've seen quite a lot of comment already on this case. We've seen the battle of the press releases. The German Constitution Corporation helped to issue a press release, but then so did the Court of Justice and so did the ECB and the Bundesbank and no doubt others that I've not spotted. And then, of course, we've had interviews with some of the key players in this case. So to try and make sense of all of this, I will hand the floor over to my colleagues, and I give the floor first and foremost to Elithio. Elithio, over to you. Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you, Catherine. So I'm going to say a few words to introduce us to the substance of the decision, but mostly about the EMU context in which it arises. Now, this decision is about the powers of the European Central Bank, but more broadly about the nature of the EU's economic and monetary union. And it's just one more chapter in a very long ongoing discussion about these topics. Now, of course, it's a very significant and a very surprising chapter, but one of several nonetheless. So the thing to bear in mind is that since the euro area crisis started in the end of 2007-2008, EMU has been changing continuously and the powers of the ECB have grown enormously. Now I'm just going to talk a little bit about these changes so that we then see how we can see how this decision is in part a reaction to them. Now, EMU in general was set up as a currency union with very little or very limited solidarity among its members. There was very limited risk sharing. Member states, one of the cornerstones of this currency union was the principle of national fiscal responsibility. So each member state should be responsible for its own debts. And the other member states should not have to pay for them, neither should the EU institutions, the ECB among them. So the ECB cannot act as a lender of last resort to a member state in trouble. This is the prohibition of monetary financing that we find in the treaties. Now, because of the reforms that were considered politically and economically necessary in the wake of the crisis, this principle of national fiscal responsibility has been eroded in the past few years. And there's of course an ongoing discussion as to whether we should move further in that direction, whether there should be more risk sharing and more solidarity within EMU in the future. Now, the other way in which EMU has changed is that specifically the powers of the ECB have grown enormously. Now, the way the ECB was set up at the start was that its powers were supposed to be limited, technical, expertise-based, apolitical. And that's why it's also independent. That's the other side of its independence. And this is how the arrangement was made palatable to member states, to Germany in particular to its national constitutional court at the time. And we know that there is limited democratic legitimacy in this area, but integration can still go ahead. We're still okay with it because the European Central Bank will stick to its very limited sphere, which is monetary policy, which is technical and expertise-based. It will not venture into economic and fiscal policy, which is a matter for the member states, which is the realm of politics. Now, what happens is that since the crisis starts, the ECB starts getting quite creative with its powers. And it comes up with different programmes that seek to help the situation in the euro area through bond buying, which ultimately provides liquidity to member states in trouble, quantitative easing, et cetera. So these are technically measures of monetary policy, but they have indirect effects on economic and fiscal policy. Now, many actors in Germany, mostly in Germany, I suppose, everywhere in the euro area, but they're very visible in Germany, have two problems with the way the ECB has been acting, two main objections to the way these powers have been exercised. The first one is these things that the ECB are doing may be, in some way, monetary financing. It's not directly lending money to member states in trouble, but at the end of the day, we come to a very similar result, and thus we come to increasing solidarity within the euro area through the back door. We are making member states pay for each other in a way. The second general objection is that the ECB is acting beyond its powers because it is in the end acting in economic policy and therefore making political assessments. So even if the measures are supposed to be of monetary policy, they have foreseeable indirect effects on economic policy, which makes this a problem of competence. They say it's interfering with national governments and parliaments, but it's also ultimately a problem of democratic legitimacy. It's acting in an area where only actors with the proper democratic legitimacy should be making decisions. Now these objections have been thrown at the ECB since the beginning of the crisis, and every time there is a challenge to the actions of the ECB before the German Constitutional Court, they come up. Now the first such challenge and the most famous was Galweiler a few years back where the claimants objected to the legality of the OMT programme of the ECB, one of these bond buying schemes. Now today we are discussing the litigation in bias, which concerns a different programme of the ECB, PSPP, quantitative easing. But the objections raised to the legality of these programmes are very similar or the same. And the same objections are also visible, at least in part in the challenge to the powers of the ECB in the area of banking union also before the German court. Sorry, which has also been before the German court. So they keep coming up. Now in Galweiler the Court of Justice responded to these two objections by saying that it didn't agree with them. So it's not, what the ECB was doing was not monetary financing, given that with certain safeguards of course, and that what the ECB was doing was monetary policy and therefore it wasn't acting outside these powers. Judging by the instruments it was using and their aims. And there was a light touch proportionality assessment to assess this. Now the German court accepted the preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice in Galweiler, but it is so grudgingly. It reinstated its reservations and it said, you know, we'll go along with it for now, or at least that was the spirit of the response, we'll go along with it. But our objections are still there, as we have seen now in VICE. What happened in VICE was that the claimants objected to the legality of this quantitative easing programme. The German court again asked the Court of Justice of the EU to consider these objections and the Court of Justice gave the same answer with the same methodology using the same approach. And everybody, or at least I did, expected the German court to do what they had done with Galweiler as well, to accept the result grudgingly, but to do so. But this time they didn't. They said that the European Central Bank had acted outside its powers by not taking into account when justifying its measures their indirect economic policy effects. The foreseeable economic policy effects. So they had acted outside its powers by not engaging in that balancing exercise. And the Court of Justice of the EU had acted beyond its powers by not subjecting the actions of the ECB to the proper scrutiny. By using a proportionality test that they also didn't require balancing or taking into account the economic policy effects of these measures. Therefore, the German court thinks making it a useless test. So what happens now is that the preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU is ultra-virus in Germany. It cannot have any effects. The ECB needs to justify these measures, also taking into account their economic and fiscal policy effects. And it needs to do so within the next three months or the German institutions will not be able to take part. Now, the judgment of course raises very significant and important constitutional questions that I'm not going to go into because I think Mark is well. I just want to mention that this is of course a response to everything that has been going on in EMU until now. But it's perhaps also a sign that the judges in the German constitutional court are also concerned about what the future may bring in the post-corona times. Now this judgment was not about the programme of the ECB, the purchase programme that they have announced to help with recovery from this emergency. But it may have a chilling effect in that respect. I think maybe one of the factors here was to say this may be the time to send a signal if we don't want this trend towards unlimited solidarity within EMU to continue. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me to this sales seminar. It's what I would like to do in the brief time available is give you a very short overview over the German constitutional courts, troubled relationship with the supremacy of EU law. I offer a brief analysis of the earth-shaking elements that this constitutional earthquake involved of the PSPT decision and then offer some brief conclusions. I've been working over the last couple of years on a book publication called Europe's Second Constitution. It's tried to grapple with some of the more liberal objections to European constitutionalisations as yet again expressed in this judgment from last week. And while it is puzzling from my perspective, there's maybe something that we can learn from the hesitation that the German Constitution Court clearly has about this. The German Constitution Court has a long history of judgments with great significance for European integration. It is yet another element of that long history, whether it's really a car bomb, a horror, or the German Constitution Court takes back control, or even declaration of war on the EU and the euro as the Liberación called it. I liked one of the blogs who called it an elaborate pause in the elaborate tangle that the German Constitution Court plays, dances with the European Court of Justice. I will only mention a couple of case names and maybe we can come back to the discussion, but of course the Zolange Jews Prudence, the as long as Jews Prudence of the 1970s, which only ended with the Zolange II decision in the 1980s, and that the German Constitution Court reserved the right for itself to review European acts as to their fundamental rights compatibility. Luckily, that Jews Prudence was given up in the mastery decision and replaced by an elaborate image of a bridge warden. A bridge warden that opens and shuts the gate for constitutional powers in the past to the European level and how that happens. We then have seen some European Court judgments with constitutional significance. The European Court decided in Tanya Crial that even a mere directive could charm constitutional provisions in Germany, which triggered an elaborate constitutional law debate, and meant that Germany had to change its constitution in the long term. It all culminated again in the Lisbon decision, which imposed what the Constitutional Court calls integration responsibility on German state organs. It modified the Maastricht No-Demos theory and declared that there's not yet a demos, i.e. real democracy is confined to the member states, and possibly never will be a demos at the European level. Logically, it followed from the Lisbon decision that there's no competence competence or no possibility for the European institutions to decide on their own powers. That, of course, meant that there was a theoretical case where the Constitutional Court could still step in and declare that the powers that the European community had exercised went beyond what had passed the bridge via the European integration article. As Alicio already mentioned, the latest judgment is in line with the relatively long history of judgments over the last 10 years. I'd just like to highlight the decision in Honeywell, where the well-known Mangold controversy found its resonance before the German Constitutional Court. In 2010, the Constitutional Court decided that Mangold was still within the realm of normal judicial reasoning, unlike, for example, the Danish Supreme Court, which decided in Ios that that was no longer covered and ultra-virus, therefore. But in Honeywell, there was a very important dissent. The dissent by Judge Landau, who forcefully argued that the decision Mangold was clearly ultra-virus and should have therefore violated the competence competence prohibition as issued by the Lisbon treaty. There were other constitutional judgments, for example, of the European Parliament cases, where the German Constitutional Court lowered successively the sort of barrier for European parliamentary elections, saying that the European Parliament wasn't really a parliament and therefore didn't require any functionality as such because it was merely advisory. As European lawyers, we can widely disagree with those kind of views. Interesting because in OMT, the case, the decision at the national level that followed the Galwaila case, it came very close to finding that Galwaila was already ultra-virus. The decision by the ECB for these bond buying programmes was outside the realm and it reasserted the so-called drops of influence, which the German state had to use with the European institutions. And if those drops of influence were eradicated, that would create ruins that were basically free of any democratic influence, which in turn meant dictatorship and that couldn't be allowed under any circumstance. So much so that this is not just a normal constitutional provision, it's a constitutional provision that falls under the Edicant's Clause, the so-called Eternity clause in the German Constitution, which says that the nature as a democracy can never be removed from the German Constitution, even through constitutional amendment. A decision that I wanted to highlight before coming to the judgment is the European Monetary Union of July 2019. It's not available in English, but again the court only with lots of hesitation accepted the European Monetary Union. It reotated that the German Constitution prohibits the transfer of the competence competence and that dynamic treaty provisions must in any case be linked to suitable safeguards for the effective exercise of the integration responsibility incumbent on German constitutional bodies. So now to the PSPP decision, which followed the preliminary reference of the same court in the vice case. It's there very clearly that the right to democratic self-determination means in principle, applies in principle to the integration responsibility that the German institutions have. Again, it reiterated the no competence competence, and it then conducted the Autra Reals review that Alicia already mentioned. It highlighted some safeguards and said the Autra Reals review must not be exercised, must be exercised with restraints, it primarily falls to the Court of Justice of the European Union. And the application of the methods and principles by the Court of Justice cannot and need not completely correspond to the practice of the domestic court. But it highlighted that it didn't want the Court of Justice to disregard the practice of the constitutional court either. It then added a new Solange judgment. It says, rather, as long as the Court of Justice applies recognized methodological principles and the decision it renders is not objectively arbitrary from an objective perspective, the Federal Constitutional Court must represent the respect, the decision of the Court of Justice, even when it adopts a view against which weighty arguments could be made. It then resorts to its own analysis whether this was really the decision wise was such a deviation and the majority unfortunately of the judges comes to that conclusion. It also includes a flawed analysis, for example, of the internal market where it doesn't respect or it doesn't even discuss the fact that the Court of Justice for EU measures uses a very different standard of review when measuring EU measures against the fundamental freedoms. In my view, it is a big mistake. So, to conclude, in my view, the fact that the Constitutional Court reviews the EU Act and uses EU law is itself ultra-virus. It oversteps the boundaries of what constitutional courts should do. It's qualitatively different from the Lantova and the Ayos decisions by the Czech and the Danish Constitutional Courts, which also used ultra-virus arguments because this time it concerns an EU Act, not an Act of Member State legislation. In my view, we'll have to live with this legal pluralism for quite some time and maybe there's a ray of hope in the German Constitutional Court re-engaging with European law in such a forceful way. Because I think it's predictable that that same court might also be the court that would rule that an exit from the European Union for Germany will not be possible without a constitutional amendment or indeed might now never be possible because of the eternity clause because it would undermine an essential element of German statehood. Thank you very much indeed Marcus for that and also because I realised that Mike was off a warm thanks as well to Olivia for her intervention. I hand the floor now over to Michael and just to remind the participants if you have questions, please put my thumb on the chat or on the Q&A, which is at the bottom of your screen. Michael, thank you very much. Thank you very much Catherine for the invitation. So my focus today will be on what this judgment may mean for the independence of the German central bank, the Bundesbank on the one hand and for the ECB on the other hand. My argument is that this is a problematic aspect of the recent judgment of the German Constitutional Court because it risks undermining the independence of both the Bundesbank and of the European central bank. For that purpose, I would like to briefly zoom in on the court's findings on the admissibility that of the constitutional complaints brought to it by 1,747 individuals, which the court grouped into four categories. And what the court says with respect to the Bundesbank and to the European central bank. Some of the applicants before the court sought to directly challenge decisions of the European central bank and of the Bundesbank. And the court, rightly in my view, declared that in so far as they concerned these two institutions, these constitutional complaints were inadmissible. The constitutional complaints according to the court were only admissible to the extent that they sought to challenge the inaction of the German government and of the German parliament with respect to the PSP. In other words, the ECB and the Bundesbank were not parties to these proceedings. As interested third parties, they were invited to provide written input, which they did. But other important actors, including the German parliament, which again was also not a party, did not even provide any written submissions. Now, as Alicia has explained, the court did review arguably only incidentally whether the European central bank acted within its mandate in order to come to a conclusion whether it was appropriate, constitutionally appropriate for the German government and the German parliament not to engage in any action with respect to the PSP. Now, if that's all that the court had said, this wouldn't be particularly problematic, partly because it's difficult to see what the German government and the German parliament could do in terms of affecting monetary policy by the euro system. Curiously, however, as Alicia has already mentioned, the court went, however, on to find that the decisions of the European central bank have no effect for legal, for German institutions, including for the Bundesbank, which was not a party to these proceedings. And in particular, the Bundesbank may not participate in the implementation of the program until the governing council of the ECB, after a transition period of three months, adopts a new decision that includes a proportionality analysis that meets the ideas and cratic requirements of the German constitutional group. Now, what I find surprising and troubling is that the court fails to mention, much less explain why this finding with respect to two third parties to these proceedings, and in joining them in so far as the Bundesbank is concerned from participating in the program, why that doesn't raise serious questions about central bank independence. So it's odd that even though there is this earlier finding of inadmissibility of the complaints insofar as the ECB and the Bundesbank are concerned, there is no serious discussion in the judgment of what this might mean for the independence of the Bundesbank on the one hand and of the ECB on the other hand. And that's a new feature, I think, of this judgment, one that is not in Gauweller and other EMU judgments of the German constitutional court. And it has, in practical terms, the potential consequence of seriously affecting the ability of the euro system to carry out monetary policy going forward. Not so in so much as this particular program that was challenged is concerned, but about monetary policy going forward more generally. I think for that reason, the German constitutional court's failure to engage with the independence of both the German central bank and of the European central bank is an important mission. And it's an important mission because that independence is guaranteed not only by EU primarily law, but also by the German constitution itself, from which the German constitutional court of course derives its authority. So against that background, it is striking and troubling that the judgment refers to the ECB's independence only four times, and once as the central reason why the mandate of the ECB needs to be narrowly construed. There is no mention of what this finding with respect to the two non parties, what that may mean for the independence of the Bundesbank and of the ECB going forward. I think that's important for the following reasons, and I'll make three points on central bank independence and judicial review. The monetary authority of the eurozone is the euro system, it's not just the ECB alone. And the Bundesbank is the most important national central bank of the euro system in terms of its capital contribution. To the extent that the constitutional court judgment precludes the Bundesbank from participating in this program and potentially in future programs, that raises serious questions not about just about the Bundesbank's independence, but about the independence of the entire euro system, which are closely, given that national central banks and the ECB are closely joined at the hips in the euro system. And it has direct consequences for a program like PSPP, which is implemented above all by national central banks and is by a considerable margin, the largest asset purchase program that the ECB has created. It's also, that's my second point, somewhat ironic that a German court mounts this arguably most significant challenge to date to the independence of the euro system. After all, it was Germany that insisted on an unprecedented degree of independence for the euro system. Germany also amended that its basic law in the lead up to EMU to constitutionally guarantee the independence of both the German central bank and of the ECB for the first time. So the longstanding champion of independence of the euro system now seemingly changes its model. And the final point is that judicial review of monetary policy making is unusual international. So the euro system is an outlier in this respect. And it is an outlier especially once one combines that with the equally unusual remedy of the individual constitutional complaint in German constitutional law. So here we have 1,747 individuals that brought these constitutional court complaints to the constitutional court because they consider that they have been that their right to vote their rights to democracy as it's sometimes called has been in French. These applicants have not suffered any injury. Apart from this possible abstract infringement of their right to vote their rights to democracy. What this means in practice is there are there are no restrictions at least restrictions at least no significant restrictions on standing what's what. So we have a wide remit for judicial review of the conduct of monetary policy in in so far as the euro system is concerned. And that's very different to how central banks in some other jurisdictions are largely insulated from any meaningful judicial review. If one looks at the Federal Reserve System in the United States, for example, there are virtually no examples of successful judicial review proceedings in so far as monetary policy is concerned. Yes, there is some litigation and employment matters and freedom of information matters, but not about the core of what the central bank does. And that has long been recognized that it would be potentially deeply problematic for central bank independence to allow to allow a judicial review, at least if it's not coupled with an extremely wide margin of appreciation for the central bank concern. So I think the key question for central bank independence that this judgment raises is to what extent the possibility of judicial review helps improve central bank decision making. And to what extent we need that possibility of judicial review for the accountability of a central bank in the unique setting that is the European Union. And that in combination with this unique feature of German constitutional law of allowing individuals or groups of individuals to challenge the conduct of monetary policy based on their own. Given that monetary policy decisions will always, at least in so far as they have far reaching effects, be controversial. That seems to be an open invitation to challenge monetary policy decisions going forward. And with that, that is my conclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed for that, Michael. I'm very grateful to you. I can see a number of questions have come in. Mohamed, do you want to put the questions to the panellists? Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Do you want to make a start? Do you want to ask the questions to the panellists? Yeah, we have questions directly now to Professor Michael. Professor Michael, would they ask the, if it's related to ECB independence, what are the repercussions of the judgment section in article 123 FBU, which seems like a dictum in the judgment, and how would it affect the PEPP program and the coronavirus. And should one be skeptical of the president's comment according to which the judgment has no effect on the coronavirus program. Great, thank you. Well, so I think the judgment raises the spectre that given that some of the crucial features of the pandemic program have not yet been clarified, which the German constitutional court seems to regard as important requirements for such programs to not run afoul of the prohibition of monetary financing such as the limit on how many, what percentage of bonds can be purchased from a single issue. I think there is the risk that there is going to be this damical sort of this judgment hanging over the pandemic program and other future programs of the European Central Bank. So, as Alicia said earlier, I think there is a significant risk that it could limit the scale and the modalities of such programs by the euro system insofar as the pandemic response is concerned and going forward more generally. Thank you. I'll step in with the question from Max Stoia for Marcus Gehring. Could you please elaborate on your argument that the German constitutional court judgment is itself ultra virus and overseps the boundaries of what constitutional court could do and what implications it's got for legal pluralism. You've got a minute. Yes, thank you, Catherine. So my argument is that it is not for member state courts to review the legality of EU acts that is reserved for the European Court of Justice. In that sense, the judgment there clearly oversteps the boundaries on the relationship between member state courts and EU courts where not respecting the protofrost kind of principle is troubling and needs to be properly reviewed. That's what I wanted to say. The German constitutional court also made a number of mistakes in their own EU law analysis and I think it's right and proper that member states should continue to rely on the European Court of Justice when adjudicating EU law not any member state court as decisive. Why do you think the Court of Justice didn't make a, why didn't the German court make further reference to the Court of Justice on the questions indirectly from voters. I think we need to recognize that constitutional courts making through my references is a very new phenomenon. It started with the Conceited Town in the Arsaloor case, so in a relatively recent history, and back then we had pages upon pages by the advocate general and the Court of Justice, how extraordinary it is that a constitutional court makes a reference. Now, I had thought that now that the courts are in direct sort of communication would be much easier to refer a question back or to further clarification as other courts have done. But the German constitutional court is clearly still stuck in the sort of old tradition of not making a preliminary reference or only reluctantly. And there was also I think a question about, you know, how can the European Court of Justice live with such a judgment. Well, I refer you back to the 1970s to 1980s. But when I would argue the Court of Justice lives very well with the kind of case law of the German Constitutional Court, which went in some ways much further, right, any fundamental right could be involved during that time. But both the Luxembourg Court and the Karlsruher Court actually lives quite well with that somewhat uneasy relationship. Thank you, Mohammed. Do you want to ask the next one? There is a question to Professor Alicia. It's from a broader perspective, could the ruling be read as signaling the need for a wider reform of the EU law as it points at the limits of the current mandate and at the untenability of the economic monetary policy divide? I think so. I mean, I, in a way, I was, if I may, I would like to connect this to what Michael was saying earlier, because I don't, you know, I think I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. Of course I disagree with some of the things the German Court is saying and of course it damages or it's damaging to the independence of the ECB. But I wonder if you could argue that in a way, you know, the German Court is not trying to influence the outcomes that the ECB comes to in its decision making. It's just asking the ECB to make the balancing exercise that it surely conducts more transparent. You know, I mean, the ECB takes into account the interact effects and economic policy of its measures, right? And the German Court, we could say, is just asking for that to be made obvious. So it's just asking for more transparency and for more openness rather than trying to impose certain outcomes on the ECB. Now, of course, it is still problematic for a court to be doing these things, but it maybe doesn't go as far as we think that it's going. Now, why does this tie into the question I just got? Because, you know, this also really looks like a trap for the ECB, right? Because the way EMU is set up is that monetary policy and economic and fiscal policy have to be completely separated. And the ECB is only doing the right thing if it's really within its monetary policy area. And if it admits that it's taken into account economic policy effects when making its decisions, then we have an argument to say that it's like an ultra virus. On the other hand, if it doesn't take into account those effects, then maybe it's acting irresponsibly. So maybe it is EMU in the way it's set up that is untenable. Maybe we need to accept, as we all do in reality, that those things are connected and they are connected for the ECB as well. So I don't know if that answers the question or it just raises a different question for Michael really. Thank you. Thank you. Mohamed, do you have a question? Yeah. Our very Cambridge professor, Sarah Newn, is asking, is a non-EMU law expert. A quick question to Michael about the independence argument. To what extent is it different or the same as other forms within the review, e.g. of EU or other course review and security council actions? Thank you. Well, so I think that is a really interesting question. I think my short response would be that we do have in the constitutional documents, so in EU primary law and in the German basic law a guarantee of this independence. So I think in that respect, it may be said to differ from the review of, say, security council actions by EU or national courts in the European Union. Thank you. I have a further question that's come in about absolutely fundamental. What's happened to supremacy of EU law? And, Ethio, do you want to start? What's happened to the supremacy of EU law? Well, in principle, I think it's a difficult question to answer. In one way, this is not that different from what had happened before. We knew that national constitutional courts had their own views about supremacy. We all accepted that. As Marcus pointed out, there were previous decisions of national courts of last resort that declared judgments of the Court of Justice ultra virus within the jurisdiction. In a way, what's different now is that the court that is doing it has a very prominent role in the debate on European integration. And sort of invented the ultra virus review mechanism and that the decision or the area or the matter in which it has chosen to press the nuclear button is a very important one going forward. This is not just about a very discreet matter that stays in the past that we're done with. This is about what happens with the future of the Euro area and with the EU by its extension. So it is very problematic from that point of view. As regards the status of EU law, I would think it doesn't need to change that much. We have what we had before. We knew this was a possibility. What we now have is that it has materialised. It is unfortunate that it has materialised in these particular circumstances and it will have huge effects down the line. Thank you, Marcus. Do you think the Commission will start enforcing proceedings against Germany? That's question. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. I think we need to remember that the Commission has discretion at every point of the way. It might well send a letter asking the German government to explain how it's going to react to this judgment or maybe only send a letter in three months. Depending on the actions of the German state institutions, but I don't think anyone would really win in bringing the infringement proceedings before the Court of Justice and then ordering something. As Daniel Summianter in his 11 blog actually explains, there were only two cases in the Court of Justice where infringement proceedings were brought before the Court for judicial decisions. So it's a very, very rare case and fraught with difficulties. It's not entirely clear whether this was a clear and physically a breach of EU law as it stands. Thank you. We have six minutes left and what I thought I would do with the last six minutes, a lot of the questions that have come in, essentially ask what's next? Who's going to move? How are they going to move? And, of course, what are the implications for any future bond buying program? Or indeed, an inevitably, there was one here, what implications are there for Brexit? So I'm going to give you two minutes each or a minute and a half each to say what do you think with your crystal ball, what's going to happen next? Should we go in the order that we started with Serlethea first? Yes, so I think the short term effects are going to be that there's going to be some sort of political accommodation that it's going to happen very shortly. You know, Chancellor Merkel spoke up yesterday or the day before saying the Court was right, the Commission is right, everybody's right and of course we can fix this. And I think that's what's going to happen. There's going to be some sort of political rehash of things and maybe there'll be some extra explanation from the ECB that won't give us new information at all, but it will be presented in the right way. It will be accepted by the German institutions and we will all move on as regards the PSPP. What this means for the pandemic emergency purchase program, I mean Michael already touched that on that it may change specific features of the program, but I mean the thing is we all know that that program is going to be challenged before the German court when it comes up. You know, we'll be having another discussion like this one about the German decision on that specific program in about three years time, so that hasn't changed. Thank you. Marcus. Yeah, the judgment comes at an inconvenient time, right? It comes at a time when the Court of Justice is trying to exert pressure on member states in the area of rule of law. It gives some of those member states seemingly a perfect excuse. And that is my main concern. It will take a lot of courage by the Luxembourg judges to actually exert forcefully that the rule of law is not up for grabs. And it will mean that some of the, you know, some of the decisions will probably have to be explained a little bit better and it might require further action by the European institutions, including the underlying commission. Thank you. And finally, Michael. Thank you. So, I mean, I think it's at least with the benefit of hindsight, it seems very clear that there was a considerable frustration that has been building up inside the German constitutional court over the last decade, and this has sort of finally erupted for whatever reason that may be. It comes, of course, at a particularly inopportune of time. And I think the broad ramification that I'm particularly worried about insofar as European Monetary Union is concerned is that if this judgment, does this judgment represent a loss of trust by mainstream public German opinion as reflected in the judges on the German constitutional court in European Monetary Union? Because in many ways, a European Monetary Union has been pretty successful over the last 10 decades. If one looks at the main economic indicators, but there is a low level of trust across much of the Eurozone in the European Central Bank, and to the extent that is now a ribbon in the very, in the economic powerhouse of European Monetary Union in recent years, I think that is a serious concern for the ECB going forward and for the sustainability of European Monetary. Well, on that cheerful note, we will draw this session to a close. I wanted to thank the panelists in particular for their tremendous expertise and precision. I want to thank the many people who have participated in this seminar, and particularly those who have asked questions. I will let the panelists have a chance to look at those questions, see if they wanted to follow up any of them later on. But for now, thank you and I hope that you'll join us again when we do another one of these sales lunchtime seminars. Thank you very much indeed and have a good afternoon.