does not lose that ethos by the magical will of States. Any other opinion would reduce to a mere formality the distinction between public and private law and, in the case of the Portuguese constitutional legal order, opens the path to a “Constitutional fraud” through the governmental circumvention of the procedure applicable to the approval of international treaties. With the EFSF, the Portuguese State undertook obligations that potentially have an impact in the financial and economic sovereignty of the State that had to be authorized by the Portuguese Parliament. In fact, it is hard to include these in the general policy competence of the Government to ‘adopt acts and take steps necessary to the promotion of social and economic development and to the satisfaction of collective needs.’XXIV The use of public international law legal instruments would also require the authorization of the Portuguese President.XXV Only the intervention of both the Parliament and the President could have granted the EFSF the democratic legitimacy required by the Constitution to internationally bind the Portuguese State. The EFSF was thus created in violation of the commitment made on 9 May 2010 by the Governments of the Eurozone Member States to provide financial assistance to Eurozone Member States through a Special Purpose Vehicle established ‘pursuant to their national constitutional requirements.’XXVI 2.5. Financial assistance under the EFSF is triggered by a request of a Eurozone Member State. A negotiation follows, in which the Commission, in liaison with the ECB, negotiates a MoU that includes financial and economic measures based on a Council decision adopted in accordance with Article 136 TFEU.XXVII The Commission signs the MoU after the approval of the latter by the Eurogroup Working Group. If an EFSM MoU has already been adopted, a separate EFSF MoU is not needed, provided that the former also covers EFSF stability support. Following the approval of the relevant MoU, the Commission, again in liaison with the ECB, proposes to the Eurogroup Working Group the main terms of the loan agreement. The technical details of the loan agreement are afterwards negotiated between the beneficiary Member State and the EFSF [Article 2 (1) of the EFSF Framework-Agreement]. The initial disbursement of financial assistance is released after the signature of the MoU. Further instalments are conditional on a unanimous decision of the Eurozone Member States based on a report presented by the Commission, in liaison with the ECB, in Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -114