Schaeuble confident of eurozone pact approval

Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Monday he was confident the country's top court will not block the signing into law of the eurozone's key crisis-fighting tools. The constitutional court, which is set to rule September 12 if President Joachim Gauck can sign the measures into law, will "I am sure, not block the European Stability Mechanism and the European fiscal pact," he said. Speaking at a conference in Strasbourg, the minister said the court will however closely "examine if these treaties conform to basic German law or not." The German parliament voted in favour of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European fiscal pact with a two-thirds majority at the end of June. But Gauck held off from completing the ratification process following a raft of legal challenges filed by the far-left Die Linke party, a citizens' initiative group and a well-known eurosceptic from Chancellor Angela Merkel's CSU Bavarian sister party. They argued that the ESM -- the EU's permanent 500-billion-euro ($627-billion) rescue fund -- and the fiscal pact were incompatible with Germany's "Grundgesetz" or Basic Law because they are effectively forcing Germany to surrender its budgetary sovereignty without the necessary democratic backing. From / History website