Noch tragbar? Versuch einer konsolidierten Erfassung der Eurorettungsrisiken

The overall risk to be borne by Germany in case of further bailouts financed through the EFSF and ESM remains an intriguing question. The German Constitutional Court’s preliminary ruling on 12 September 2012, capping Germany’s ESM risk exposure at €190 billion, has not rendered further examination of the topic irrelevant. Indeed, Germany’s aggravated risk exposure bomb continues to tick, because EFSF funds have already been promised as guarantees for ailing states and they will continue to be used thusly. The article quantifies these risks, in addition to the Target II risk exposure, to confront the Constitutional Court with facts that it — consciously or unconsciously — ignored in its aforementioned ruling. If the Court had been more diligent or more open to financial expertise, the worst-case scenario of a near doubling of German public debt (from about €2 trillion to €3.7 trillion) makes it hard to understand how the Court could have considered such risk compatible with its own postulate of sustained fiscal democracy. Copyright ZBW and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012