The country-specific recommendations, which each year identify the key objectives to tackle these vulnerabilities, are hardly or not at all acted upon. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The time has come to initiate a new economic convergence process, thus relaunching the convergence efforts that each euro area country agreed to prior to adopting the single currency[13].
After its adoption, these efforts dwindled and, before the crisis, we saw a divergence in terms of inflation levels, unit labour costs, current account balances and levels of GDP per capita[14]. The abrupt adjustment necessitated by the crisis showed the economic and social cost of this divergence.