During the first decade of our monetary union, economic conditions were benign, enabling the euro area to achieve robust growth and relatively stable price inflation, consistent with the Eurosystem price stability target. However, the Global Financial Crisis and the sovereign debt crisis that followed put pressure on all our economies.
Last year, central banks (CBs) dealt with acute and persistent volatility on financial markets and together with their governments tried to address deep economic contraction. This year, CBs of emerging markets (EMs) have been facing new challenges of a multi-speed economic recovery and a simultaneous inflation spike with a high degree of uncertainty.