The main reason for requiring a high degree of sustainable convergence is to ensure that a country participating fully in EMU has established economic conditions that are conducive to the preservation of price stability and that contribute to the coherent and smooth functioning of the euro area economy.
In our assessment the outlook for the real economy has deteriorated and we think that there are downside risks to growth. This is a significant change compared with the assessment three months ago, when we thought that the risks were balanced. On the other hand, in July there were upside risks to inflation, but now they are balanced.