These technological innovations, along with reductions in transportation and communications costs, have also made possible a wider geographic dispersion of the production process -- not just nationally but internationally. And to ensure access to foreign markets, countries have been pursuing multilateral and regional trading arrangements.
At the same time, loan maturity limit was reduced. Taken together, this is one of the largest sets of borrower-based measures in the EU. It has created a reliable backstop against the deterioration of lending standards. Combining different instruments helps prevent evasion, targets a wider range of risk sources, and allows measures to reinforce each other.