One example of joint actions between central banks during this period is the by now familiar US dollar Term Auction Facility, which started in December of last year, in which the ECB agreed with the US Federal Reserve to grant loans in dollars to euro area banks with a maturity of one month against collateral eligible for Eurosystem credit operations.
Progress towards greater contractual flexibility remains slow in several euro area countries. Moreover, in those European countries and regions where competitiveness has declined and/or the unemployment rate remains high, it is important that wage increases do not fully exhaust productivity gains in order to provide incentives for firms to create additional jobs.