The paper aims to frame the genesis and governance of the European Stability Mecha-nism (ESM), which has recently been the subject of a heated public debate both on its changes and on its use to solve the health crisis that has affected the Eurozone ten years after the eco-nomic crisis that began in 2008. Although the ESM poses many legal problems, it was con-sidered useful to focus on the functioning of the Treaty conditionalities, the impact on national policy direction and the democratic deficit of these intergovernmental mechanisms. One won-ders whether this is really the idea of the European Union that the founding fathers wanted and whether the time is ripe to make a real (and significant) turning point that is indispensa-ble for the survival of the European project.