On 16 June 2015 the European Court of Justice delivered its decision in the Gauweiler case, 1 concerning the legality of the Outright Monetary Transactions Programme of the European Central Bank. The Court considered the Programme compatible with EU law, as long as certain safeguards are observed in its implementation. The decision has important implications for the powers of the European Central Bank, the constitutional framework of the EU's Economic and Monetary Union, and for the relationship between the Court of Justice of the EU and the referring court, the German Federal Constitutional Court. This was the first time that the German court had asked for a preliminary ruling, 2 and it remains to be seen whether the national

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On the 11 December 2018, the Court of Justice of the EU delivered its preliminary ruling in Weiss, on the legality of the ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme. The matter had been referred by the German Federal Constitutional Court; this was the second reference ever made by this particular national court, after the landmark case of Gauweiler. And just like Gauweiler before it, Weiss concerns the powers of the European Central Bank and, more broadly, the conflict between different

Although very different in many respects, the EU and Canada nevertheless confront common problems in certain areas. One such common problem is how to manage inter-state regulatory diversity within a federal (or federal-like), multinational system. This paper compares the different ways in which the EU and Canada have chosen to address the problem of national barriers to trade within their internal markets, and the consequences of these choices. It is somewhat counterintuitive for EU lawyers that a full-fledged state may have an internal market that is less integrated than that of the EU; and yet that is the case in Canada. The comparison is illuminating as to the different possible approaches of federal polities to the problem of state regulatory choices and barriers to trade, the paramount importance of institutional choice, and the significance of historical and political circumstances.