1. Introduction 1.1. During 2012 and 2013 Portuguese lower courts repeatedly made use of the power given by Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFUE) to refer questions for a preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice (of the EU) that targeted measures adopted by the Portuguese State to meet loan conditionalities stemming from a three-year €78 billion bailout program agreed with international lenders that included the EU. The program envisioned a strategy of fiscal consolidation that had the objective of reducing the deficit and public debt through the adoption of austerity measures that included tax increases and cuts in State spending coupled with the adoption of structural reforms aimed at fostering economic growth, employment and productivity. The bailout was negotiated between April and May 2011 by the Portuguese State with a Troika composed of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission. Negotiation ended with the draft of three memoranda. Two of them – the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) and the Technical Memorandum of Understanding (TMU) – were sent as an attachment to a letter of intent addressed by the Portuguese State to the IMF`s Executive Board that asked for access to the fund´s resources. The other – the Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (MoU) between the Portuguese State and the European Commission– was signed in Lisbon on 17 May 2011. The first disbursement of financial assistance loaned by the EU and by Member States followed the entry into force of the MoU. Further instalments were conditional on a Commission´s positive review – enacted in liaison with the ECB – that took place on a trimestral basis during the duration of the programme. The second updated version of the MoU, dated 9 December 2011, made a loan disbursement conditional on the adoption in 2012 of a budgetary law that: ‘reduce(d) wages for all general government sector employees in 2012 by (i) suspending the 13 th and 14th monthly salary payments for those workers with monthly salaries of EUR 1,000 or more, ii) suspending on average and in a progressive way the equivalent of one of those two salaries for those workers with Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -107