Thus, we are confident that the HICP will drop below the 2 % threshold during the course of the next year. In the run-up to European Monetary Union, prices in those European countries with a history of higher inflation rates had been remarkably stable. All countries met the inflation criterion with ease. Recently, the sustainability of this monetary convergence process has been questioned.
The spread between the lowest and the highest inflation rates in the euro area is now wider than it was at the outset of monetary union. In January 1998, this difference reached a low of 0.7 %. By the year 2000, the gap had widened to 3.5 %.