The Fund arrangement is not an approval of the memoranda submitted by the State seeking assistance. The memoranda are substantially broader that the Fund´s arrangement, and include measures that are not conditions of the loan. The distinction between the Fund arrangement and State memoranda creates a great deal of opacity because the IMF does not publically distinguish the measures that are suggested to the States to be included in the memoranda (fund-supported programs) from measures that are a condition for the financial assistance and are mentioned in the Fund´s arrangement (program-related conditions) (Siegel 2002: 581). This legal and political conundrum is frequently used by governments to approve unpopular measures with the argument that they are a condition imposed by the IMF.LIX EU institutions involved in the bailouts followed the IMF modus operandi and identified the MoU as national law.LX This may explain why the MoU was not published either in Portuguese or in the EU´s official journal. Tracing the EU origin of the austerity measures included in the State budget Act for 2012 was not a simple task for Portuguese lower courts. However, this statement does not hold true for an institution with the resources of the Court of Justice: ‘Whilst the Court has consistently held that, in the context of the application of Article (267 TFEU), it has no jurisdiction to decide whether a national provision is compatible with (EU) law, it may, none the less, extract from the wording of the questions formulated by the national court, and having regard to the facts stated by the latter, those elements which concern the interpretation of (EU) law, for the purpose of enabling that court to resolve the legal problems before it.’ LXI It was a notorious fact that the Fidelidade Mundial and the Via Directa preliminary references were made after the bailout. This should have been enough for the Court of Justice to factually distinguish those cases from the preliminary reference submitted in Sindicato dos Bancários do Norte. Moreover, the national provision that was mentioned in the preliminary reference submitted by Portuguese courts (Article 21 of the State Budget for 2012) stated that the suspensions of the holiday and Christmas monthly pay were to be implemented ‘during the period of application of the Economic and Financial Assistance Programme (PAEF).’LXII Thus, it was simply not accurate to declare that ‘the order for reference did not contain(ed) any specific evidence to support the view that (the national provision) was intended to implement Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -122