Judgment_paragraph 93 · Alessandro Accorinti and Others v European Central Bank (T-79/13)

93Nor, second, can the applicants validly claim, in essence, that the private investors and the Eurosystem central banks are in comparable situations in the light of the impact on the European economy of the effects of the reduction of the value of their bonds. In the applicants’ submission, the burdens imposed solely on private investors in the context of the restructuring to the Greek public debt are ‘likely to have the same systemic effects on the European economy’ as the involvement on an equal footing of the Eurosystem central banks in that restructuring, which those banks avoided by concluding and implementing the exchange agreement of 15 February 2012. Even on the assumption that, by that argument, the applicants seek to assert that the PSI and the procedure under the CACs were of such a kind as to seriously affect the confidence of private and institutional investors in the intrinsic value of the Greek bonds and, accordingly, in the reliability of the Greek State as a debtor — a fear which was at the origin of the ECB’s initial opposition to selective default by the Hellenic Republic and the partial restructuring of its public debt (see paragraphs 78 to 80 above) –, they have failed to make clear and to prove that those consequences would be comparable to those that the Eurosystem central banks would have to bear and that they would be likely to disrupt the functioning of that system in the same way. On the contrary, having regard to the total value of the Greek bonds and acquired and held by those central banks, as emphasised by the applicants themselves, any involvement by those banks in the restructuring of the public debt of a Member State of the euro area, irrespective of whether it was lawful or not in the light of Article 123 TFEU (see paragraph 114 above), would have been likely to affect the financial integrity of the Eurosystem as a whole and, in particular, its capacity to operate in the financial markets and to refinance the credit institutions pursuant to the first and second indents of Article 18(1) of the Statute. In that regard, it should be pointed out that State bonds are at the same time collateral which those central banks are normally supposed to accept for the purposes of credit operations within the Eurosystem and to maintain access to liquid assets by the national credit institutions (see paragraph 6 of the general document referred to in paragraph 4 above). It follows that the complaint that the ECB and the Eurosystem national central banks reserved to themselves the status of ‘preferential’ creditor to the detriment of the private sector, ‘on the pretext of their monetary policy task’, must also be rejected.