Therefore, it might appear at first glance that the effects of the Bank’s monetary policy have been limited. After taking upward and other biases into account, however, the adjusted and smoothed distribution of households’ inflation expectations indicates that the spike at around 2 percent became sharper in 2013, which shows that households’ inflation expectations are concentrated at around 2 percent (Chart 8).
Economic and monetary integration of the accession countries will proceed in three stages: first, the acceding countries will join the EU in May 2004, second, the new Member States will participate in ERM II, the exchange rate mechanism of the EU, for at least two years, and third, after the sustainable fulfilment of all the convergence criteria laid down in the Treaty, the new Member States will adopt the euro.