The preparatory work BIS Review 25/1998  -6-  undertaken by the EMI has reduced the number of possible options to just two strategies: monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The EMI has thus, for convincing reasons, ruled out exchange rate targeting as a nominal anchor for monetary policy in the euro area.
With the quarter-on-quarter growth rate of real GDP at 0.9% for the second quarter of 2006 and on the basis of upward revisions to the real GDP growth data for the two preceding quarters, economic activity has been growing robustly, at a quarterly rate of around 0.7% on average over the last four quarters.