On each occasion our unemployment rate rose sharply – to 6.5 per cent in the 1970s, to 10.3 per cent in the 1980s and to 10.8 per cent in the 1990s. While we were able to reduce the unemployment rate during the later expansionary phases, each recession pushed it up again to a new peak (see Table 1).
Of course, we were considering both favourable and unfavourable impacts of our future membership in Eurozone. According to all the analysis available the benefits were clearly prevailing. The development of euro implementation strategy in 2003 and later on the creation of the National Plan of Euro Implementation in 2005 followed.