EU risks institutional showdown after German ECB ruling

The European Commission threatened twice in a weekend to sue Germany over a ruling by the country’s constitutional court challenging the European Central Bank’s monetary authority, raising the prospect of an institutional showdown on the continent amid the deepest recession in a century.

“The final word on EU law is always spoken in Luxembourg. Nowhere else,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement on Sunday, referring to the headquarters of the European Court of Justice. She also threatened a lawsuit after Germany’s constitutional judges gave the ECB a three-month ultimatum to fix alleged flaws in its quantitative easing policy.