Merkel speaks -- but what does she say?

A strange tone, which is my special interest after all, to the story in teh Graun today:

The UK will have to “live with the consequences” of Boris Johnson ditching Theresa May’s plan to maintain close economic ties with the EU after Brexit, Angela Merkel has said, hardening her tone over the prospect of a no-deal scenario at the end of the year.

Stating the bleedin obvious, but with a threat? The Graun tells us what it might 'really mean', 'in effect'

Coming in the week of the fourth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the change of rhetoric from within the chancellory also appears to quash renewed speculation in the British press that Merkel could seek to soften Brussel’s red lines to secure a last-minute deal.

And for those who have not been following, or who have returned exhausted from a hard week of statue-deinstalling:

Negotiations between the UK and EU are in deadlock over whether Britain needs to tie itself to the EU’s developing state aid rules and common environmental, social and labour standards in return for a zero-tariff trade deal.

Same as it's been all along of course.

There is also a little more insight on the Euro bailout:

On 18 May, Merkel surprised even party colleagues in her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) by teaming up with Emmanuel Macron to push for a European recovery fund worth €500bn (£448bn)....“In a crisis of this magnitude, each and every one of us is expected to do what needs to be done. What needs to be done in this case is something extraordinary. Germany had a low debt ratio and can afford, in this extraordinary situation, to take on some more debt. It is also very important to us to keep the programme within the bounds of the European treaties. We have found a way to do that.”

Merkel and Macron’s initiative faces resistance from Austria, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Even if they can sway the “frugal four”, in the coming months there is likely to be a scramble for access to recovery packag [sic] funds.

 Some suggest Merkel’s seeming reinvention from arch-austerian to big spender has been forced by the German constitutional court’s ruling on 5 May, questioning the legality of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme, and thus the entirety of the EU’s legal regime....

Then a mysterious bit, surely requiring...oh I don't know...'factual information, and analysis that has authority and integrity'. Instead, what looks like journalism by press handout:

“Without a doubt, European law has precedence over national law – but that does not tell us where the realm of European law begins and ends,” said Merkel. “The essence of the European Union lies in the member states transferring powers. In the borderland between the spheres of jurisdiction of national and European law, friction can occur if the European level defines its limits more broadly than, for example, the German Parliament does. That’s what we are seeing in the ECB case.”...While the ruling of the constitutional court in Karlsruhe represented “a conflict”, Merkel said, it did not fundamentally challenge the legal order of the EU: “That is the nature of the beast, since a nation state will always be able to lay claim to particular powers unless all powers are transferred to the European institutions, which is surely not going to happen.”

Even the Germans are having doubts about full integration? I missed some of the details myself about the ruling exposing a difference between the German courts and the European Central Bank. The Graun covered it in May:

Germany’s constitutional court jolted eurozone investors and hit the value of the euro after judges warned that the European Central Bank’s plans to flood the financial system with cheap credit could breach German law...The bombshell ruling by the court in Karlsruhe came after judges agreed that Germany’s central bank must stop cooperating with the ECB’s long-running stimulus scheme within the next three months unless the ECB could prove it was not excessive.

 “An optimistic interpretation could be this is lots of barking without biting and that everything is fine as long as the ECB demonstrates that it has thought through the economic consequences of its decisions. But a pessimistic interpretation could be that no amount of additional ECB analysis will convince German judges and could, therefore, spell the end of QE [quantitiative easing] ”

the decision highlighted the constraints on the ECB as a lender of last resort compared with the more independent US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England