Although import prices for raw materials have risen strongly since 2003, it can be said that, over the same period, the acceleration in import prices overall, all products taken together, has been moderated by the growing proportion of euro area imports coming from countries with low production costs (countries in eastern Europe and Asia, particularly China).
It remains that the phenomenon of globalisation and of its acceleration since the mid-1990s has coincided with a decline in global inflation and in its volatility. Concomitantly and as a consequence of this stabilisation of inflation at a low level, we have also seen lower volatility in macroeconomic variables.