Practically, one set of pan-European payment instruments should be available to serve the whole market, making national legacy payment instruments superfluous. Needless to say, such an initiative, which requires unprecedented forms of co-operation among competing market actors, may give rise to competition concerns.
The practical implementation of the approach has varied in a number of respects, including who sets the target (government or central bank); whether it is expressed as a range or a fixed point; the price index employed; the use of adjustment or “override” mechanisms, and so on. These differences, however, are less significant than the common principle on which targets are based.