Top EU court says it alone can rule on EU bodies' acts

The European Union's top court on Friday said that it alone has the power to rule whether EU bodies breach the bloc's rules, issuing a statement days after Germany's Constitutional Court said that the ECB had overstepped its mandate with massive bond purchases.

While the Court of Justice of the European Union declined to comment specifically on the German ruling earlier this week, it said: "In general... In order to ensure that EU law is applied uniformly, the Court of Justice alone... has jurisdiction to rule that an act of an EU institution is contrary to EU law."

"Divergences between courts of the member states as to the validity of such acts would indeed be liable to place in jeopardy the unity of the EU legal order and to detract from legal certainty," the Court of Justice of the European Union said in a statement.