BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Central Bank can buy sovereign debt in the secondary market as part of its new bond purchase plan and is not limited in its actions by a pending European Court decision on the matter, a top ECB policymaker said on Wednesday.
The ECB's Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) programme, launched in September 2012 and yet to be used, was the key tool with which the ECB managed to bring the euro zone back from the brink by promising potentially unlimited purchases of the sovereign bonds of member states.
The German constitutional court deferred a ruling on the legality of the programme to the European Court of Justice earlier this year and has already said there was good reason to think the OMT exceeded the ECB's mandate and violated a ban on the ECB funding governments.
Speaking at a conference in Berlin, ECB Executive Board member Yves Mersch said purchases of government bonds in the primary market were "explicitly not among" the instruments at the ECB's disposal to fulfil its mandate.
"Our mandate nevertheless includes the possibility of buying, under the appropriate conditions, government bonds on the secondary market (so-called 'Outright Monetary Transactions' or OMTs), should this be necessary from a monetary policy perspective," he said in the text of a speech.
Mersch added that he was "very optimistic that the interaction between the ECB and the Court of Justice will lead to 'a good result'".
"Until then, we are not limited in our actions."
(Reporting by Annika Breidthart, writing by Eva Taylor)