This chapter investigates in detail the bargaining dynamics surrounding the economic governance reforms as well as their direction and timing. It contrasts expectations derived from traditional theories of European integration, that is, liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism, with those from more recent postfunctionalist/new intergovernmentalist perspectives. It argues that Council-centred enforcement, which, despite noncompliance, has been a dominant design feature at least until the sovereign debt crisis, does not sit comfortably with traditional theories but can be explained by policy salience and implementation uncertainties. On the other hand, the emphasis that traditional approaches assign to supranational pressures, such as noncompliance, commitment problems, threats of exclusion and veto, issue linkages, path dependencies, and supranational decision-making, allows to adequately account for the overall direction of reforms towards more tightening and delegation, notwithstanding the pooled enforcement in recent ancillary measures. Postfunctionalist theories overall fall short in highly politicized contexts, exactly where they should do most of the explaining.