This in turn affects households’ and firms’ consumption and investment decisions.3  As regards the scale of the impact on economic activity and prices, the available estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty. For instance, last week the European Central Bank (ECB) published its latest macroeconomic forecasts. To endeavour to capture the impact of the war in Ukraine, the ECB envisages three scenarios based on different assumptions as to the severity and duration of the adverse effects of the conflict on financial markets, energy input prices and global value chains. As a result, euro area GDP growth for 2022 has been revised down, compared with the December 2021 projections, by between 0.5 pp (to 3.7%) and 1.9 pp (to 2.3%), while the average inflation rate for 2022 has been revised up, again compared with the December 2021 projections, by between 1.9 pp (to 5.1%) and 3.9 pp (to 7.1%). The economic policy response The scale of the effects of the conflict will also ultimately depend on the economic policy response. Allow me to now offer a few thoughts on that response. European economic policy Like the pandemic, the armed conflict in Ukraine represents a highly adverse, exogenous shock common to all European economies, but potentially one that will have asymmetric  3  The scale of the adverse effect of growing uncertainty on economic activity is per se very difficult to measure.
Petar Goshev: Brief overview of the financial crisis and its impact Opening speech by Mr Petar Goshev, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the international economic forum “Faster towards the European Union”, organized by the Economic Chamber of the Republic of Macedonia, Ohrid, 2 November 2008. *  *  *  Honorable President Azevski, Dear presidents, business leaders, honorable excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Let me thank Mr. Azevski for the given honor to speak in front of you this evening, in this exceptionally turbulent, exciting and at the same time challenging period in the economic and financial history of the world. From the invitation I can read that I have the honor to address representatives of ten countries in the region, primarily people who face all sorts of challenges in solving the puzzles from the real economic life, every day. From the statistics I looked through, I may conclude that I have the pleasure to speak in front of representatives of nearly 64 million citizens (63.89 in 2007), whose GDP was around 507 billion Euros altogether in 2007, as opposed to the GDP of 40,000 billion achieved by the world (i.e. 1.27% of those 40,000 billion), in front of the representatives of the 64 million citizens who during the same year exchanged goods and services with the rest of the world in the amount of 295 billion Euros, as opposed to the 20.4 thousand billion of realized foreign trade of the whole world, i.e. a share of 1.43%.