The Eurozone rules, enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty (now part of the Lisbon Treaty), explicitly bar the ECB from giving credit to public entities or buying their bonds. This, quite simply, means the Eurozone member states now operate as local/regional governments under them used to. Lacking funding from a supranational entity since the European Union does not have its own fiscal resources, all states can rely on is their own tax income and they must run balanced budgets like a private firm or a local government in order to retain access to private credit. In the Eurozone, therefore, the State must be run like a private firm. What used to be a political slogan is now the only way to function consistently with the institutional framework. Even the Social Democrats admit it and propagate it.