This chapter examines how—in order to react to new security threats and shifts in transatlantic relations—in 2025 the Commission activated the national escape clause to allow member states to spend on defence without being sanctioned under the new Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). This clause, which lasts for four years but can be renewed, supplements the new flexibility of the 2024 SGP. Moreover, the Council approved a programme of joint EU loans which to some extent resembles NextGenerationEU—Security Action for Europe—to enable groups of European countries to engage in common defence procurement. The chapter also shows that in 2025 Germany radically changed its approach to budgetary discipline. In light of this, I argue that stability as the main policy goal of the new fiscal rules has been replaced by security in the short and medium-term. However, in the long term, Germany will probably push for going back to the stability paradigm. At the same time, while endorsed by France, defence borrowing is not fully supported by countries like Italy and Spain that advocated for it in the past. Therefore, the stability paradigm has been temporarily overcome in practice but not permanently replaced by a competing, alternative paradigm centred on security. Finally, “on paper” the fiscal rules still make the EU a sui generis political system, also compared to fiscally decentralized federations.