III  Competitiveness and unit labour cost developments in euro area countries  Having discussed the outlook for inflation and growth – as well as highlighted what are in my view the priority areas in which decisive progress on structural reforms is most urgently needed – I would now like to move on to another key challenge for the euro area countries: improving competitiveness.
In this respect, let me elaborate further on developments in unit labour costs, 9 which I briefly mentioned a few minutes ago. A number of euro area countries have witnessed relatively strong increases in unit labour costs since the beginning of 1999.