Benoît Cœuré: Convergence matters for monetary policy Speech by Mr Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) conference on "Innovation, firm size, productivity and imbalances in the age of de-globalization", Brussels, 30 June 2017.
* * * A few years ago, heterogeneity in the euro area was causing people to question the sustainability of the currency union. The global financial crisis, and later the sovereign debt crisis, led to a destabilising dispersion in interest rates and, ultimately, in real and nominal economic indicators.