When people felt pain time and time again, they came to fear that pain above all other things. So they tried to ignore it, to forget it was happening, as a way of bearing it. And pretty soon, they would come to feel like they'd accomplished something just by doing that -- even though nothing had changed.
We no longer have the pact from 1997; it was radically amended in 2005 and the Commission is applying this Stability Pact with wisdom and rationality.