Judgment_paragraph 79 · Alessandro Accorinti and Others v European Central Bank (T-79/13)

79As regards the statements made by Mr Draghi and Mr Trichet, it must be observed that, in the light of, first, their general nature; second, the fact that — as correctly emphasised in those statements — the ECB did not have the power to decide on any restructuring of the public debt of a Member State affected by a selective payment default; and, third, the prevailing uncertainty in the financial markets at the time concerning, especially, future developments in the financial situation of the Hellenic Republic, those statements could not be described as precise and unconditional assurances originating from authorised and reliable sources, still less as assurances that that Member State would not adopt a decision on such restructuring. Although the ECB was involved in monitoring developments in the financial situation of the Hellenic Republic within the framework of the ‘troika’ formed by it, the IMF and the Commission, it was not competent to decide on such a measure, which fell mainly if not exclusively within the sovereign power and budgetary authority of the Member States, in particular its legislature, and, to a certain extent, the coordination of economic policy by the Member States pursuant to Article 120 TFEU et seq. In such circumstances, opposition to such a restructuring, such as repeatedly expressed in public by Mr Trichet and Mr Draghi in a climate of increasing uncertainty on the part of the financial market players, was to be interpreted as having a purely politico-economic scope. In particular, by adopting that approach their authors sought to warn those players against further deterioration in the economic situation at the time, and even the possible insolvency of the Hellenic Republic, whose potentially defaulting bonds would no longer be acceptable to the ECB and the national central banks as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations (see Decision 2012/133, adopted subsequently) and, moreover, against the risks that such a development could entail for the stability of the financial system and the functioning of the Eurosystem as a whole. It should be added that that opposition on the part of the successive Presidents of the ECB was accompanied by the information that, in the event that such a default should none the less occur and the Member States concerned should decide on a restructuring of the public debt, the ECB would require that that restructuring was supported by sufficient guarantees in order to protect its integrity and to maintain the stability and the confidence of the financial markets. It follows that, in that respect also, the ECB did not encourage legitimate expectations that its opposition would be maintained if the Member States concerned decided to carry out such a restructuring, or that it had legal capacity — which it did not — to preclude such an approach.