Some took the position that the Treaty’s criteria were too strict and ambitious, given the initial conditions from which a number of member countries had to start convergence. Others, from the perspective of the most stable economies in the EU, were convinced that they granted considerable, in fact excessive, latitude.
This debate between strictness and latitude left a margin of ambiguity, which largely affected the evolution of expectations prior to 1998. The perception that the criteria might be impossible to meet for countries too far off the benchmarks produced uncertainty over the number of countries able to participate in Monetary Union from the outset.