Hence market pressures for political action were correspondingly low. This changed abruptly when the financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis set in. Since many countries had failed to take advantage of the favourable economic climate in the early years of this century to consolidate public finances, their position was weak when the crisis struck.
The main challenge remains more timely delivery, no later than 90 days after the end of the  5  An updated overview of all available ECB statistics has recently been published in “ECB statistics: an overview”. See http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/ecbstatisticsanoverview/2010en.pdf.