The Stability Programme Update (SPU) is one of the bureaucratic building blocks created by the European Commission in the wake of the financial crisis a decade ago.
It holds its place on the same bookshelf as the 'Six Pack', the ‘Two Pack’, the European Semester and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure.
All sensible and, thankfully for most us, relatively obscure diktats to keep us compliant with the EU’s Fiscal Compact. Remember that?
We enshrined that in our constitution back in 2012. Since then we’ve dutifully followed the EU’s budgetary rules that keep the public finances within defined limits of expenditure and debt.