transposed almost ipsis verbis into national law the bailout conditionality foreseen in the Council Implementing Decision 2011/344/EU and in the MoU. In Fransson, the Court clarified that fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter must be complied with where national legislation ‘falls within the scope of European Union’ rather than only when they are ‘implementing EU law’. The application of the Charter is not limited to cases where national law formally transposes EU law. According to the Court of Justice, ‘situations cannot exist which are covered (…) by EU law without (…) fundamental rights (protected by the Charter) being applicable. The applicability of EU law entails applicability of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter.’XL 4.2. The Commission and the ECB were key institutions in the bailout. When negotiating, signing and assessing the conditionality imposed on Portugal, the former had to assure that the Charter and the social acquis of the EU was respected. In the role of guardian of the Treaties as resulting from Article 17(1) TEU, the Commission should have refrained from signing and implementing a MoU whose consistency with EU law it had every reason to doubt.XLI The MoU foresaw cuts to health and education, pensions and other social benefits, as well as reductions in the size and pay of the public sector.XLII In Fidelidade Mundial and Via Directa, Portuguese courts questioned the compatibility of pay cuts in the public sector with the workers ‘right to working conditions which respect his or her health, safety and dignity’ [Article 31 (1) of the Charter]. But many other legislative acts enacted to comply with the MoU could have also been challenged on their compatibility with the EU social constitution, such as those related to changes introduced in the dismissal law and in the collective bargaining system (Koukiadaki 2014: 28-30). The lack of EU competence to impose social austerity could also be a ground for challenging the MoU and the Council decisions that support it (Costamagna 2012: 15-16; Barnard 2013: 267-268). XLIII When reviewing the validity of the MoU, the Court of Justice would also have been given the opportunity to address breaches of core principles of the rule of law (Kilpatrick 2015: 349), and in particular the breach of the principle of legal certainty and legitimate expectations (Martín Rodríguez 2016: 266-268; 277-278). The latter forms part of the EU legal order and must respected by EU institutions and Member States when implementing Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -118