too. but our infrastructure and our big towns are much younger than their belgian counterparts. let me now turn to the survey of the finnish economy. [ slide 2 ] finland is a small open economy, where trade has shaped the key trends of our economy. even if the exports have been falling recently, they still represent about 40 % of gdp. finland ’ s trade with euro area economies has been increasing since the global financial crisis, germany being currently the largest trading partner. russia ’ s share of our exports has fallen to 6 %, notably because of weak growth performance in russia since 2013, after the drop in oil prices. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches finland ’ s goods exports consist mainly of paper and wood products, metal and engineering products, and electronics equipment. in recent years, the structure of the finnish economy has undergone radical changes in the wake of difficulties encountered by the forest and electronics industries. export earnings from the mobile phone business, which had long supported our economy, have disappeared, the significance of russia has diminished, while importance of countries such as germany have increased. despite the difficulties of the recent past, the forest industry is still one of the pillars of finnish exports alongside the heavy engineering metal industry, and high tech electronics. software industry, like online games, creates a lot of revenue, but employ relatively few people. [ slide 3 ] finland ’ s growth performance was exceptional between 1995 and 2007. it was fueled by finland ’ s long tradition of investing heavily on human capital and education. the focus on engineering helped too. finland was in the good position to ride on the global trend of ict and mobile phones after the exceptionally deep recession in the early 1990s. finnish export firms managed to create products enjoying widespread demand and capable of capturing new geographical market areas. by the turn of the millennium, the electrical engineering and electronics industry had outstripped the forest industry as the largest export sector, its products accounting for about a third of total export value. eu accession also helped to set up the credible fiscal framework and push through important structural reforms at the time. [ slide 4 ] unfortunately, the tide changed rapidly around the global financial crises. finland suffered from the decline in foreign markets during the global financial crises. initially, the recovery was fast, but it lasted only until about 2011. after that finland entered a period of low growth ( or even no growth ) and increasing unemployment. this period of low growth was due to a unique mix of asymmetric shocks. they all contributed to falling

axel a weber : challenges to convergence in the larger eu statement by professor axel a weber, president of the deutsche bundesbank, at the conference “ governance and structure of european finance after eu enlargement ”, frankfurt, 9 march 2005. * * * introduction thank you for inviting me to this important conference. in fact, all three roundtable topics highlight major aspects of the further integration of the european economies, of progress in terms of the lisbon agenda and, ultimately, of successful enlargement of monetary union. eu enlargement last year was, above all, an administrative and political challenge. the economic challenge of the emu enlargement still remains to be tackled. european monetary union may be seen as a unique economic experiment surpassed, in terms of its historical importance, only by a handful of reforms. one such reform project which is of even greater historical importance is the vast international experiment involving the simultaneous transformation of more than 30 former centrally planned economies into market economies. and now eight of them are members of the eu and are aiming to become members of monetary union as well. and it is our task as central bankers to lay the groundwork for this further historical step of monetary unification through growing monetary integration. state of convergence at the core of our preparations is a uniform analytical framework for assessing the state of economic convergence. this framework has already been applied to the current member states of the eurosystem. the rationale behind the convergence criteria which are to be assessed every other year by the eurosystem is that countries may join the euro area only if their participation is conducive to the maintenance of price stability and the viability of emu. the convergence criteria form a coherent and integrated whole, so all of them must be met. looking at nominal convergence, it has to be admitted that the new member states have made considerable progress over the past few years. however, they still have a long way to go before they finally achieve entry into the euro area. none of the countries in question formally meets the exchange rate criterion of participation in erm ii for 2 years at the moment. three new member states have been participating in erm ii since 28 june 2004 on the basis of a unilateral commitment. the aim of having a high level of sustained nominal convergence is not only a precondition for entering monetary union, it is also in the interests of every individual state. it will also remain in their interests after entry into monetary union. we experienced the positive momentum