The meeting of the EU finance ministers was supposed to go off without a hitch. After all, the member states had already agreed on the joint declaration on the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact in advance. But then German Finance Minister Christian Lindner arrived and demanded changes to the text. He urged the Commission to consult the member states once again before submitting its legislative proposals to reform the budget rules. His demands were partly successful, but they also antagonized a number of colleagues, as Till Hoppe and Christof Roche report.