This will only become more essential in an ever globalising world. These factors have led to real economic benefits for Germany. Its intra-euro area trade increased from around 25% of GDP in 1999 to almost 40% of GDP in 2010, while its extra-euro area trade increase by more than 20 percentage points in the same period.
Almost 65% of foreign direct investment in Germany now comes from the euro area – and more than one and a half million jobs depend on that investment. In other words, a stable euro area supports a strong German economy. And a stable euro area is the objective of the all the measures that I have just described.