The Limits of Legal Accountability of the European Central Bank
The Euro Crisis has granted a new role to the European Central Bank (ECB) on top of the previous one: from regulator of monetary policy in the Eurozone to active participant in the governance of the common currency area. In light of the relevance of the latter role, some of the decisions of the ECB have been predictably challenged in court. This article reviews the Court of Justice of the European Union's jurisprudence on the status and function of central banking in the EU. It focuses on three decisions (OLAF, Pringle, Gauweiler) to show that the trajectory of the Court has been too deferential toward the ECB. The Court could not change the role and function of the ECB because this would be beyond the scope of legal accountability; yet, the Court ought to have adopted a stricter review of ECB's decisions and signalled a change in the constitutional function of the ECB to the other European institutions and the European public.