All in all, the priority sector mandate is now not only better targeted at the truly excluded, but will be delivered more efficiently. Mandates are not costless. Rather than forcing banks to recover costs by overcharging ordinary customers, or by demanding recapitalisation by the government, better to bring the costs into the open by paying for the mandate wherever possible.
Austria encountered no difficulties when it joined the EMS at the beginning of 1995, as it continued to peg the schilling unilaterally to the Deutsche mark, and this link was tighter than the fluctuation bands within the EMS.