However, looking separately at the two subperiods before and after the beginning of EMU, we observe that the speed of convergence has changed substantially: from 1992 to 1998 the half-life was 1.3 years, while from 1999 to 2002 it is estimated as 12.8 years.
This reflects the efforts to meet the Maastricht inflation criterion: the inflation rate of a country was allowed to be no more than 1.5 percentage points higher than the average inflation rate of the three countries where inflation was the lowest.