ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the broader implications of institutional engineering in the context of the Fiscal Compact and its surrounding legal and deological environments. The place that should be occupied by autonomous agencies in the constitutional state has been contested from the very beginning. The bureaucratic limitations of the Commission have generated novel forms of counter-majoritarian institution-building in newer members states, notably in the areas of judicial organization and anticorruption. The ‘Judicial-council Euro-model’ promoted by the Commission in all new member states is a case in point. The correction mechanism of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union is a revolutionary instrument in more than one respect. The Fiscal Compact was adopted in correlation with, and as a complement to, the Treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
