The Eurozone crisis poses the most significant challenge to the project of European unity. The perceived necessity to support struggling Eurozone members with vast money transfers has met with the growing resistance of both German and Slovak electorates. Conversely, EU assistance to Ireland has not been met with popular support by the Irish people. As a result of the crisis, many Irish people feel humiliated, Germans overtaxed, and Slovaks unfairly treated. The aim of this paper is to test the proposition advanced by Cheneval and Schimmelfennig in favour of EU demoicracy and see how their ''difference-principle for member statespeoples'' can be applied to the EU policies recently pursued in response to the Eurozone crisis. Can the institutional architecture of the European Financial Stability Facility be reconciled with the demands of that principle? If yes, what practical policy recommendations would follow? My working hypothesis is that Cheneval and Schimmelfennig''s proposal is paradoxically both too ambitious and too modest. It is far too ambitious in stipulating that demoicracy needs to ensure that ''the least advantaged member statespeoples (GDP per capita)'' ought to achieve the highest ''sustained and sustainable'' growth rate. Can any supranational organization achieve this? If yes, at what costs? Yet the proposition is also too modest because any meaningful conception of justice as fairness has to look beyond growth rates and GDP per capita. What of the differing impacts of various taxation regimes on wealth distribution between and within statespeoples?
