7 Although this is a very encouraging fact, which shows that the positive employment effect we witnessed over the last ten years has significantly helped us to counteract the growth differential to the US, one has to remain aware of the inferior starting position of euro area countries. These improvements did not cancel out structural weaknesses of labour markets.
Besides our core function and mandate to guarantee price stability in the euro area as a whole, one of our tasks is to develop what we could call “ our product”, the euro banknotes. The new series of banknotes will continue to reflect the unity and diversity of our continent.