Chapter 3 concentrates on economic and institutional logic, consequences and controversies arising from bailout programmes for the Eurozone’s periphery engulfed by the sovereign debt crisis. It revisits the systemic role of the bailout programmes for the crisis stricken Eurozone countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus) and compares their effects to some other European countries which fell into banking and/or balance of payment crises during the Great Recession (the Baltic states, Iceland). I am preoccupied in particular with the nature and the beliefs underpinning the economic and fiscal conditions of the bailout programmes. Against the notions of the external vs. internal devaluation, the chapter explains in particular why austerity and structural reforms played such a crucial role in each of the programmes. It also investigates the role of the European Central Bank and the Court of Justice in pressurising the national governments undergoing the programmes. I revisit and reassess the main arguments against the programmes, raised by the “anti-austerity” scholars throughout the sovereign debt crisis.