Eurozone awaits German Constitutional Court ruling

Against a backdrop of popular discontent in Germany against eurozone bailouts, Germany's Constitutional Court is set to rule on the legality of Berlin coming to the aid of indebted eurozone states. Germany's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is due to announce on Wednesday whether Berlin's contribution to loans for Greece and other struggling eurozone countries is legal. The 17-nation bloc will be watching the verdict closely: An adverse ruling could call into question a planned permanent EU bailout mechanism.   German lawmakers have passed legislation on the eurozone's safety net program and on bailing out Greece, but time was too short for them to make an informed decision, according to economist Joachim Starbatty. Starbatty heads a group of legal experts - and euroskeptics - who filed a complaint with the Karlsruhe-based Constitutional Court, one of several separate complaints the court received concerning the creation of the permanent eurozone bailout fund, called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The laws allowing the ESM and the Greek bailout are a breach of parliament's sovereign budgetary rights, Starbatty told Deutsche Welle. "Parliament's hands are tied," he said. "Taking away a parliament's central budgetary sovereignty in the light of the threat to the euro can't be the purpose of European development."