Top EU court says it alone decides if EU bodies are breaking bloc's rules

The European Union's top court said on Friday it alone has the power to decide whether EU bodies are breaching the bloc's rules, in a rebuke to Germany's highest court, which this week rejected its judgment approving the ECB's trillion-euro bond purchases.

Germany's Constitutional Court ruled that the ECB had overstepped its mandate with bond purchases and that the Bundesbank must quit the scheme within three months unless the ECB can prove its necessity.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave the green light in 2018 to the ECB scheme, which kept the eurozone in one piece after its debt crisis but which critics argue has flooded markets with cheap money and encouraged over-spending by some governments.

The CJEU did not comment specifically on the German ruling but reiterated that it was the bloc's judicial authority.

"In order to ensure...