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GERMANY’S CONSTITUTIONAL COURT has said that a last-minute legal challenge by a leading eurosceptic politician would not delay its hotly awaited verdict on key euro crisis tools.
“The date fixed for the ruling” on the ESM rescue fund and EU fiscal pact on Wednesday “will go ahead as planned,” the court said in a statement.
That means that at 9am Irish time on Wednesday, the eight scarlet-robed judges of the Verfassungsgericht will decide whether German President Joachim Gauck can sign into law the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European fiscal pact.
The German parliament already voted in favour of both with a two-thirds majority at the end of June.
But Gauck held off from completing the ratification process in the face of legal challenges filed by the far-left Die Linke party, a citizens’ initiative group called “More Democracy” and a well-known eurosceptic from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CSU Bavarian sister party, Peter Gauweiler.
In an attempt to delay Wednesday’s ruling, Gauweiler filed a new complaint at the weekend, arguing that the European Central Bank’s decision to launch a new bond-buying programme had moved the goalposts and that the court must now first decide whether the bond purchase programme is legal before it can rule on the constitutionality of the ESM rescue fund.
The Constitutional Court held an emergency session on Monday to decide whether to delay its planned ruling on Wednesday in face of Gauweiler’s latest challenge.
Gauweiler and the other groups argue that the ESM – the EU’s permanent €500 billion eurorescue fund – and the fiscal pact are incompatible with Germany’s “Grundgesetz” or Basic Law because they are effectively forcing Germany to surrender its budgetary sovereignty without the necessary democratic backing.
By committing Europe’s biggest economy – and already its effective paymaster – to the ESM, parliament was essentially exposing Germany’s public finances to unlimited risks should one eurozone country after another topple under the debt crisis, they argue, charging that this meant German voters’ basic democratic rights were being infringed upon.
When asked yesterday what it would do if the ESM were overturned, a spokesperson for the IMF said: “We’ll come to that hurdle when we reach it”.
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We deserve a massive reduction in our tv license for wasted money spent on producing shows such as Dancing with the stars and Ireland’s got talent. I know there’s an off button on my TV but these shows should only be visible on RTE Player and not mainstream.
I’d rather watch Christy Duignam tell his life story on the late late for the 10th time than to watch a bunch of overpaid RTE presenters & z listers buck leaping round a studio.
@Gareth Cooney: Ireland’s Got Talent is set for TV3 so no license fee money going there. It’ll last 2 seasons, at best, anyway.
@Pat Doran: IGT will be another Tops of the Parish show. Easily avoidable.
BREAKING NEWS: I won’t be talking about any of these shows!
@An Observer: ___ Not even to say “I don’t watch that crap?”
Jason Byrne is shockingly bad at every thing he dose….
@gold3n:
Some say he can’t even spell simple 4 letter words
@Tweety McTweeter: You’re missing an ‘a’ there
@gold3n: he is a bit of a dose.
@gold3n: but he does it LOUDLY, so its hilarious
Hold on a second. You’ve included Dancing With The Stars and Ireland’s Got Talent in your list of programmes included in the golden age of television? Surely you jest?
They may well be talked about, but purely in a derogatory fashion.
New comedy on RTÉ DANCING WITH THE STARS
@EC P Ford: It should be called “Dancing”
@Paul Furey: ___ It should be “Desperate Z Listers falling about because they’ve got nothing better to do.”
@EC P Ford: Dancing With The Stars’ Non Famous Siblings.
Great, more shows I can watch online. I don’t know about you people, but TV is just not for me.
@Dalya Al-Tulaihi: I was only saying the other day how much you’d miss the mundane show games or chat show repeats. Now everything you watch has to be just as exciting and as mysterious as the last show and you’re not going to be happy till you find something which could take ages. There’s very little you can throw on for the sake of it, You end up spending more time clicking and swiping which leads to more time spent in front of the screen. You have to pause it instead of waiting for the adds while you run to the jax or to make a cup of tea disturbing everyone’s viewing ,that’s if you’re lucky enough everyone’s not on their own screen. Online viewing is great all right and instant but sometimes you’d miss the traditional viewing.
@Hardly Normal: oh I totally agree!! But since no one in the house is bothered with the tv anyway it’s hard for me to bring that tradition back all by myself you know!? It’s great when the family is gathered and all are watching the same show, but the older you grow the more distant you become from family because everyone start to have their own taste in shows, movies, etc.
I was reading the article skeptically, however, there is a lot of good shite in there.
What about doctor who
Looking into the future like former Taoiseach Brian Cowen. Must watch TV my arse.
@Paul Coughlan: biffo can read the future through interpreting his Guinness shytes.
Load of shite
@JJ: What a waste of 160. for a license
They missed a trick in not getting Kim Kardashian to play donatella Versace as she is morphing into her recently
Bring back the Riordans I say !!!
What did you use to ‘bait’ your breath? Maggots? Worms?
Just waiting for the next episode of Designated survivor, that is all, last episode broke me
Black Mirror dropped on Netflix this morning.
What I want to know is…when will the RTE bring back Celebrity Pigs ‘n’ Heels?… sorry meant…Celebrity Jigs ‘n’ Reels…
How about Wheeler Dealers ?
I never watched the English Dancing with the stars so I don’t know why I decided to watch the Irish one, however, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Another reason not to pay tv licence
RTE CRAP!!!!!!!!! NOT ONE ORIGINAL PROGRAM THAT WORTH LOOKING AT
BOYCOTT TV LICENCE
I wont be talking about them. Same crap on RTE. Just a different year.
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