The progress in lowering trade barriers since World War II marks the triumph of putting an important idea into practice - that international trade benefits all nations. Indeed, in every nation, those benefits are shared by people spread across quite different income brackets. The pity is that this idea has been well known in the economics profession for the two past centuries.
The Governing Council of the ECB will continue to discuss the specification of the strategy along these lines over the months to come. The Governing Council will then specify the exact formulation of its strategy and its implementation in 1999 before the start of Stage Three. BIS Review 77/1998