Since the Great Recession started, there have been eight bailouts to European Union (EU) Member States, which cost the EU around EUR 380 billion. The aim of this article is to analyse the legal-constitutional issues that this major bailing out operation has brought about. The conclusion is that the EU was not only ill-prepared from an economic perspective to make bailouts; it was also ill-prepared from a constitutional perspective, above all if one understands law, as this article does, as a credibility device. Absent further reforms and clarifications, the current EU system of bailout governance may be prone to generate important credibility problems in the future.
European Public Law