which it analyses the compliance by the beneficiary Member State with the terms and the conditions set out in the MoU and in the Council Decision relating to it [Article 3 (1) of the EFSF Framework-Agreement]. 2.6. On 6 April 2011 the Portuguese Government requested the Commission for financial assistance. The answer arrived two days later in a joint declaration of the Eurogroup and Ecofin that made EFSM and EFSF support conditional on the adoption of a ‘financial and economic adjustment programme’ supported by strict conditionality.XXVIII The negotiation that followed ended on 13 May 2011 when the Portuguese Government and Portuguese Central Bank sent to the European Commission, the Eurogroup and the ECB a letter of intent, with a MoU as an attachment, that included the project of an adjustment program. On 17 May 2011, the Council granted EU/EFSM financial assistance to Portugal through the Implementing Decision 344/2011/EU.XXIX On the same day,XXX the Portuguese Government and the Commission signed a MoU that foresaw the adjustment program and specified the conditions of the financial support foreseen in the Council Implementing Decision.XXXI The request for EFSF financial assistance was sent on 13 May 2011 by the Portuguese Government to the President of the Eurogroup in an attachment to a letter of intent. The answer arrived four days later (17 May 2011), when the Ministers for Finance of the Eurogroup decided to loan Portugal €26 billion (a third of the bailout) through the EFSF.XXXII As a condition for the bailout it was established that the EFSF loan agreement with Portugal had to specify that the disbursements there under had to be subject to compliance with the conditions set forth in the memorandum signed on that same day between the Commission, the Portuguese Government and the Bank of Portugal.XXXIII This was the memorandum (the MoU) that detailed the general economic policy conditions as embedded in Council Implementing Decision 2011/344/EU on granting Union financial assistance to Portugal, whose signature conditioned access to the EFSM. Thus, no independent EFSF memorandum was signed in the Portuguese bailout.XXXIV The implementation of the adjustment programme created an economic recessive spiral that inevitably led to the impossibility of accomplishing the budgetary targets included in the MoU. For that reason, after trimestral evaluations of the programme by the Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -115