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The paper aims to frame the genesis and governance of the European Stability Mechanism (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 economic crisis that began in 2008. Although the ESM poses many legal problems, it was considered 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 wonders 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 indispensable for the survival of the European project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]