In addition, reforms aimed at removing rigidities and expenditure trigger effects in social welfare transfers would also be appropriate in some countries. The capacity of economies to respond successfully to the challenge of euro adoption would be further enhanced by a greater degree of price and wage flexibility. Generally speaking, the NMS have a satisfactory track record on this count, at least compared with the non-core euro area countries, but the extent to which the existing flexibility is enough to enable a sufficiently rapid catching up process in the context of an increasingly competitive global trading environment is yet to be assessed. An overriding consideration relates to the degree of vulnerability that an economy might experience during its participation in ERM II. This is now generally perceived as a testing period to be entered into once the economy is deemed a credible candidate for euro area membership, but not to be postponed to the extent of unduly retarding the adoption of the euro, with the consequent negative effects on policy credibility. Indeed, the exposure to the international markets which participation in ERM II implies requires NMS to follow even more prudent policies, especially on the fiscal front, compared to existing euro-area countries. This is needed to compensate for the vulnerabilities, not least that arising from capital account openness, which the NMS are facing. This aspect of ERM II appears not to be sufficiently understood by advocates of delayed euro adoption in some of our countries.
As a result, the ECB has a clearer and more credible inflation target, since this 2% target eliminates the possible impression of asymmetry that could stem from the previous target (“below, but close, to 2%”) and seeks to provide a clear anchor for inflation expectations. As I will highlight later on in my talk, this definition also confirms the medium-term orientation of monetary policy that already existed under the previous strategy. This medium-term orientation provides room for inevitable short-term deviations of inflation from the target, as well as for lags and uncertainty in the transmission of monetary policy. Moreover, the flexibility embedded in this medium-term orientation also allows for an appropriate monetary 5  policy response to inflation deviations from the target that takes into account the origin, scale and persistence of the underlying shocks to inflation. Second, the ECB has taken into account the monetary policy implications of the lower bound on interest rates. In particular, the new strategy establishes a requirement for especially forceful or persistent monetary measures when the economy is close to the effective lower bound, in order to prevent negative deviations from the inflation target from becoming entrenched. This may also imply a transitory period of overshooting in which inflation is moderately above target. I will also refer to this key aspect of the new strategy in the third part of my talk today. And third, the ECB has made explicit that the set of policy rates remains its primary monetary policy instrument.