Abnormal sources and institutional actions in the EU sovereign debt crisis : ECB crisis management and the sovereign debt loans

Abstract

This chapter examines the institutional actions and acts produced in the context of the EU sovereign debt crisis. By identifying a number of these acts and actions as abnormal rather than merely non-standard or atypical, attention is drawn to the features of these acts and actions that trouble the law/non-law boundary. Significantly, they trouble it not because they are soft law, but rather because they act as law without fulfilling the requirements or desiderata of binding acts adopted by public authorities. This includes obviously problematic features such as secret sources and institutional actions. It also opens for consideration the cumulative and not easily visible institutional power conferred by interaction of a series of different levers possessed by the European Central Bank in sovereign debt crisis management. Hence the contribution stresses the rule of law issues raised by this large new area of EU action.