I firmly believe that the countries in trouble will return to growth if the necessary measures are taken within an appropriate timeframe. 4. Implications for monetary policy  Ongoing recessions or weak growth in peripheral countries and strong growth figures in Germany and some other euro area countries have raised the question of whether such heterogeneity poses a problem for the single monetary policy.
I would like to make three comments to put this perceived problem into perspective. Firstly, current euro-area heterogeneity with regard to growth rates is not significantly greater than in the first years of EMU. The weighted standard deviations of quarterly growth rates are only slightly higher than in the years before. What has changed significantly is the national ranking of GDP growth.