The German government has backed a European Central Bank bond-buying stimulus programme in a row with the country's top court which demanded a demonstration of the scheme's "proportionality", according to a letter seen by AFP Monday. "The finance ministry is convinced that the ECB council... has convincingly demonstrated its deliberations about proportionality," according to the letter from Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to parliament president Wolfgang Schaeuble. The German government had received documents from the ECB justifying the programme, after the Federal Constitutional Court charged that governors failed to sufficiently account for their policy's side effects on the likes of banks and savers. tgb/hmn/jh