To start with the first long-term economic issue, I now turn my attention to the contribution that structural reforms to euro area labour markets can make to reducing the very high level of European unemployment. As I have done in my comparison of the euro with the dollar, let us again contrast the developments in Europe with those of the United States.
In 1970 unemployment in the United States, at around 4%, was actually significantly higher than in most European economies. Since then, although there has been a marked variation in the US unemployment rate during the course of each economic cycle, there has been no apparent longterm trend, as the unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in January 1999.