Currently, market participants are reflecting about additional ways to offer card services: we are aware of 3 different initiatives Monnet, EAPS and Payfair. Let me emphasize once more that the cornerstone of SEPA is competition. In this regard, the benefits of SEPA in the cards market will only be realised if there is sufficient competition.
Repeated attempts to reduce unemployment by allowing inflation to rise would result in ever-increasing inflation with unemployment returning to its natural rate. Although the Friedman-Phelps hypothesis swept through academia in the 1970s, policy makers were slower to catch on. As a result, the 1970s, and in some cases the 1980s, provided a real-world laboratory for testing the Friedman-Phelps hypothesis.