In particular, there would be less exchange rate uncertainty, and also interest rates were expected to be more stable – and, on average, lower. EMU would also bring about microeconomic efficiency benefits such as lower costs of currency exchange, more price comparability and greater competition, as well as deeper, more competitive and more efficient money and other financial markets.
On the other hand, a great deal of attention was devoted to the asymmetry of economic structures in Finland vis-à-vis the rest of the euro area. While macroeconomic trends in the core EU countries such as Germany, France and the Benelux countries usually were broadly similar, economic fluctuations in Finland had historically diverged a lot from the core.