As the successive financial assistance packages to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and now Cyprus have been put in place in conjunction with the IMF to deal with the loss of market access by those countries in the crisis, institutional deepening has also been in the works.
The initial funding vehicle, the EFSF, has been succeeded by a permanent successor, the ESM, incorporating risk-sharing mechanisms based on mutual national guarantees proportional to the share of ECB capital. But that is just one dimension of the fiscal institutional reforms.