The Commission’s dual role as the guardian of the EU Treaty on the one hand and as a political institution on the other is undoubtedly a factor in the repeated compromises made at the expense of budgetary discipline. After all, as a political institution, the Commission must always strive to strike a balance between the various political interests of the member states.
The outcome is that individual euro area countries have breached the budgetary rules ever since the financial crisis erupted. Austrian comic Werner Schneyder once accurately characterised the situation as follows: Europe, he quipped, is made up of countries that do not want to be told to do what they have decided to do themselves.