Therefore, there is enough evidence to wonder if the question of a decent wage can still really be considered so irrelevant within the confines of the EU; if its substantial exclusion from the quality of work agenda is justified, or if it would not rather be the case to admit that the problem of guaranteeing an adequate wage level is increasingly evident in the EU, not only in the external dimension but also internal. There appear to be two processes in particular which have determined the emergence of the problem, which until the 1990s seemed to have abated if not totally disappeared; on the one hand the introduction of a single currency with the relevant Stability Pact and the necessary policy of wage moderation which followed (§. 2); on the other, the enlarging of the Union - and its market - towards countries characterised by levels of social welfare inferior to that of longer standing member states. (§. 3). Such issues will be dealt with more extensively in the following pages
