Another quick passage from Streeck's book, does fit in with was briefly touched on above - apologies for length, but it really does put it all nicely:
It is neither possible nor necessary to discuss here in detail the rush of new regulations, institutions and instruments that the European Council has negotiated and decided upon since the beginning of the crisis. Less than three months separated the coming into force on 13 December 2011 of the ‘sixpack’ – six European laws to reform the Maastricht stability and growth pact – and the signing of the European Fiscal Pact on 2 March 2012. Additional rule changes, going ever further beyond the powers assigned by the treaties to the bodies of the EU, were under active preparation in summer 2012. The tendency has for a long time been the same:
1) Guidelines for the fiscal policy of member-states are becoming more and more detailed. Their observance is required in return for any rescue measures by the European ‘community of states’, and particularly for its willingness, under the pressure of market threats, to mutualize public and private credit risks.
2) National governments are under ever tighter obligations to press ahead with the market-conforming reconstruction of their economic, social and legal orders. For example, in line with the German model, they must incorporate debt ceilings into their constitution. They must also find ways of adapting their wage formation systems to macroeconomic stability goals defined by the EU, and must for this purpose be prepared to ‘reform’ their national institutions, if necessary against the resistance of their citizens and without regard for either national rights to free collective bargaining or the limits of the jurisdiction of European-level institutions.
3) Equally important are the areas in which the new EU statutes refrain from interfering in the autonomy of member-states. No provisions stipulate a minimum level of taxation, such as would limit fiscal competition within the single market.27 This keeps up the tradition of the European Monetary Union, whose convergence and admission criteria contained nothing about a maximum tolerable level of unemployment or social inequality.
4) EU institutions, whether already existing or still to be built, get ever more far-reaching rights to oversee the economic, social and fiscal policies of member-states, even prospectively and in matters before national parliaments. The body with the greatest powers at European level is the Commission; the Council, representing the democratically legitimated member-states, takes only second place, with some kind of veto right, often on the condition of unanimity.
5) The penalties that the EU can impose on member-states for failing to observe its rules are growing larger. Enforcement procedures have an increasingly judicial form and are automatically started, with less and less scope for discretionary political decisions.
6) The national and European regulations that are supposed to determine the economic and fiscal policies of member-states are to be formulated in such a way as to be valid forever, protecting them from being changed by new political majorities.
7) Lastly, in the event of non-compliance by a member-state, it is increasingly demanded that Brussels, in particular the Commission or the Court of Justice, get the power to act on behalf of the respective national state and take decisions for it and in its place to ensure conformity with the requirements of the market.
The direction in which this is heading is clear from a speech that Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank (who before this had been the chancellor’s closest economic policy adviser), gave in Mannheim on 14 June 2012. At a key point he remarked:
In the event that a country does not keep to the budgetary rules, national sovereignty would automatically pass to the EU level to the extent necessary for the targets to be reached … One example might be the right to implement – and not simply demand – tax increases or proportionate spending cuts … Within such a framework, the EU level could secure the path to consolidation, even if no majority can be found in the national parliament concerned.
