KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's top court said on Tuesday Angela Merkel's government did not consult parliament sufficiently about the configuration of Europe's permanent bailout scheme, but experts said it should not hamper Berlin's ability to react to the debt crisis.
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is supposed to come into effect in July but has not yet been ratified by many euro zone member states' parliaments, including Germany's Bundestag.
After the constitutional court ruling, which responded to a complaint from the opposition Greens, the euro fell to a session low versus the dollar.
Germany's main centre-left opposition, the Social Democrats (SPD), said it was "a good day for parliamentary democracy. Euro rescue mechanisms must be more transparent and more accountable to the people," said leading SPD MP Thomas Oppermann.
But legal experts said the ruling would have little impact on the German government's actions in the ongoing euro zone debt crisis, unlike a ruling last year on the current bailout scheme which did put some limitations on Berlin's ability to react.
"The markets appear to be overreacting, this is not like the ruling last year on the EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility)," said law professor Christian Calliess at Berlin's Free University.
"This ruling is not relevant to the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone," he told Reuters, adding that it just clarified to what extent the German parliament should be consulted.
A constitutional court ruling last year gave a bigger say to German lawmakers in the EFSF, by obliging the government to seek the approval of the Bundestag's budget committee before agreeing to German participation in euro zone bailout operations.
(Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Stephen Brown in Berlin; Writing by Stephen Brown and Sarah Marsh; Edited by Stephen Brown)
