The European Commission decided today to seek a swift court ruling to overturn finance ministers' suspension of EU budget rules for France and Germany.
Instant criticism from Berlin was a foretaste of the political friction the move is expected to provoke at a time when the euro zone's big governments want to retain the power to stimulate growth using fiscal policy.
The EU executive, which is responsible for enforcing the bloc's laws, argued that a court ruling was vital to clarify the disciplinary procedures applied to those who break the EU's deficit limit as Paris and Berlin have done repeatedly.
But German Finance Minister Hans Eichel said the decision to go to the European Court of Justice was unwarranted and the EU would have been better served by a different approach.
Financial markets showed little reaction to the widely expected Commission decision, and international ratings agency Moody's said euro zone credit ratings would not be affected by the lawsuit.
The legal challenge was seen as risky as there is no guarantee that the Commission would win its case or that the court would agree to the fast-track procedure that would give a decision in three to six months rather than two years.
The Commission's legal service has concluded that finance ministers broke the law by taking an ad hoc political decision to suspend the rules after rejecting a Commission recommendation to order Berlin and Paris to make deeper deficit cuts in 2004.
But member states' own legal advisers in the EU Council said ministers had a discretionary power to reject the Commission's view, even if the procedure they adopted was legally dubious.
Germany is not alone in opposing legal action - even some who took the Commission's side last year have spoken out. For instance, Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser, an outspoken stickler for fiscal orthodoxy who opposed the decision to bend the rules for France and Germany, said yesterday he was against the Commission taking the issue to court.
But Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pedro Solbes and his supporters argue that Brussels has a duty to uphold the rule of law and avoid a precedent that could legitimise rule-breaking in other areas and ultimately undermine the EU treaty.