This chapter discusses the initiation of the euro’s transformation and the shift from negative to positive solidarity, in the form of financial assistance, that it caused. Its origin lies in a historical meeting of the heads of state or government on 11 February 2010. There, the leaders initiated a change in the Founding Contract by jointly committing themselves to safeguard the currency union’s financial stability. The chapter subsequently focuses on the positive solidarity displayed towards distressed member states through various temporary rescue funds. This not only created difficulties for political leaders back home, politically and legally, it also put great strain on the single currency’s legal set-up that still reflected a stability conception from the past. The third part of the chapter therefore discusses how member states tried to take away this strain by incorporating the shift in solidarity in Union law through the creation of Article 136(3) TFEU, allowing member states in the currency union to establish a permanent rescue mechanism. The chapter traces the process and considerations behind both this amendment and the establishment of the mechanism it enabled.

Not only the member states should be given credit for the survival of the single currency. The European Central Bank deserves credit too. Throughout the crisis it resorted to ‘unconventional’ measures that have proven crucial for the stability of the currency union, especially its government bond programmes SMP and OMT. This chapter examines these programmes and argues that they are an intrinsic part of the transformation of the euro. Since the Bank’s mandate and constitutional position ultimately rest on the Founding Contract between the member states, it could not intervene in bond markets without a prior change in this Contract through which states committed themselves to a different currency union based on a broader stability conception. Only such a contractual change, and confirmation of it through concrete action, could provide the necessary political cover for bond purchases that pushed the boundaries of the Bank’s original mandate.