In respect of nominal convergence, inflation was rather volatile in the first half of this decade. But recently, the economy has seen a gradual decline in HICP inflation, reaching 1.9% in 2007, although in the first half of 2008 it rose to 3.7%.
As the ECB has always stressed, low-inflation environment attained in the recent past will need to be confirmed and sustained over the years to come. The convergence of long-term interest rates has been even more dynamic, as they are now at around 5%, more than a third less than they were earlier this decade.