By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Wednesday said that the countries of Europe needed to join forces financially to meet the costly challenges it faces.
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on 15 April 2026 and updated on 17 April 2026 with Joachim Nagel, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank:
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – The European Central Bank does not necessarily have to deliver on financial market expectations of ECB interest rate moves, according to Governing Council member Joachim Nagel.
By Marta Vilar and David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) - Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on 16 April with Alexander Demarco, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank:
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – June, rather than the April 30 policy meeting, would be the more appropriate point for the European Central Bank to judge whether the war-driven energy shock is feeding through into broader inflation, according to ECB Governing Council member Alexander Demarco.
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Wednesday said that the countries of Europe needed to join forces financially to meet the costly challenges it faces.
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel on Wednesday argued that the digital euro had become a political project aimed at strengthening Europe’s sovereignty in payments, saying the bloc could no longer afford heavy reliance on non-European providers in such a critical area.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gediminas Šimkus said on Wednesday that the ECB should refrain from raising interest rates at the April 30 Governing Council meeting.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said on Wednesday that the ECB cannot yet determine whether the Middle East conflict will be a temporary shock or a more persistent one until its duration becomes clear.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on 20 March 2026 with Petra Wehlert, Head of Capital Markets of KfW.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – German investment and development bank KfW is likely to issue another euro green bond in Q2 2026, according to KfW’s Head of Capital Markets, Petra Wehlert.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on 13 March 2026 with Adrián Martínez, Vice Director of the Swiss Federal Finance Administration.
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – A new Swiss confederation bond is expected later in 2026 and could be issued around the 2041 maturity, which represents the next gap in Switzerland’s bond profile, according to Adrián Martínez, Vice Director of the Swiss Federal Finance Administration (FFA).
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – Econostream’s ECB Tone Meter has reversed its recent hawkish uptick, with the Governing Council still in slightly hawkish territory but less firmly so, while the Executive Board has returned to neutral.
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank did not abruptly take an April 30 rate hike off the table. Instead, starting in late March and gathering pace by mid-April, policymakers increasingly stopped preparing markets for action at the next meeting and started buying time. April remained formally live, but messaging pointed more and more clearly toward June as the meeting at which the Governing Council expected to know enough to judge whether the Iran shock was merely painful or genuinely inflationary in the medium term.
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s speech in Berlin on Monday fit neatly into the pattern of recent ECB communication. Patient but not complacent, it was above all an effort to explain why the ECB still does not know enough to draw robust near-term policy conclusions.
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – OMFIF’s new survey on who should succeed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is interesting chiefly as a snapshot of elite chatter, because it treats the ECB presidency as if the position were being filled by a search committee weighing CVs against a competency matrix.
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We return from the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington yet more convinced that treating a June hike as the inevitable byproduct of an April hold understates the risk that June, too, will prove too early.