in the original version of the MoU. Finally, in case 575/2014 (14 September 2014) (Special Sustainability Contribution) the Court considered that the objective set forth in recommendations adopted in the context of the excessive deficit procedure was binding and declared that, although Article 4 (2) TUE obliges the EU to respect the supremacy of Member States constitutions, the constitutional principles of equality, proportionality and the protection of legitimate expectations stemmed from the rule of law and ‘belonged to an European common legal heritage’ that also binds the EU, thereby ignoring possible conflicts that could emerge from different balancing of those principles by national and European courts.LXVII In the decisions that trumped austerity measures there is always an implicit caveat that the national provisions that breached the Constitution were not included in the MoU. In other words, they were a direct result of a political option of the Portuguese State and, therefore, had to be reviewed according to the usual constitutional standards of adjudication.LXVIII In the decision on the State Budget for 2012 (5 July 2012) (Case 353/2012), the Portuguese Constitutional Court was able to avoid addressing the constitutionality of austerity measures that stemmed directly from bailout conditionality by declaring – against all evidence – that the MoU, although binding, ‘did not foresee any suspension of the holiday and Christmas monthly salary payments or of any other similar measure.’LXIX A more coherent, though to a large extent still quixotic, approach would have been to question the validity of the MoU by sending a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice – it would have been the first in the history of the Portuguese Constitutional Court. LXX Such a reference would immediately acquire enormous resonance and thus be politically much harder to ignore. 6. Conclusion The MoU specified bailout conditionality included in the Council implementing decision that authorized EU financial assistance to Portugal. It also contained obligations of the Portuguese State that stemmed from the excessive deficit procedure. Being EU law, the MoU was not exempt from judicial review by the Court of Justice. The EU is a union based on the rule of law in which all acts of its institutions are subject to review of their compatibility with, in particular, the Treaties, general principles of law and fundamental Except where otherwise noted content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Italy License E -124