Resumen de The Scope of the Inviolability of the ECB’s Archives Revisited

Heiko Sauer

• The issue of the inviolability of the archives of the European Central Bank (ECB) has gained practical relevance with the seizure of ECB documents held by Banka Slovenije, the national central bank of Slovenia. Suddenly the largely unexamined scope of the privileges and immunities of the EU has appeared on the agenda. Whereas an extremely narrow interpretation of those privileges and immunities has been strongly advocated recently in this Review, this article foregrounds the functional conception of the EU’s privileges and immunities and illustrates its consequences. The author takes the view that the responsible entity behind both the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the Eurosystem is the EU, and that the national central banks (NCBs) are vested with virtually no autonomy when they perform tasks within these systems. Accordingly, the ECB documents they hold do not forfeit their inviolability. Similar considerations apply for the national competent authorities (NCAs) in the field of banking supervision when they act within the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). The inviolability of the ECB’s archives even extends to documents originating from NCBs if they relate to functions within the ESCB/Eurosystem. From a functional perspective, national authorities closely interrelated with the ECB in substance thus have two different archives of which one enjoys protection under EU law.