Finland stood apart from the euro area also with respect to its geographical trade specialisation. Only one third of our exports went to the euro area, which made Finland particularly vulnerable to disturbances outside the currency union. Exchange rates were seen as a particular risk: fluctuations in the external value of the euro could have a disproportionally strong effect on Finnish production.
The Dutch central bank is one the leading institutions with regard to research in the field of cash management in the Eurosystem and I look forward to hearing more about the various links between research and operational aspects. No doubt, there is currently a rather active strand of research into distributed ledger technologies and various forms of digital money.