ECB’s Villeroy: France Can Expect Positive Growth and Lower Inflation

22 June 2022

By David Barwick – PARIS (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member François Villeroy de Galhau on Wednesday said that the French economy could expect positive growth in this and the coming years, along with more subdued medium-term inflation.

In an interview with French commercial radio network RTL, Villeroy, who heads Banque de France, said of the domestic economy that ‘[t]hings are obviously complicated’, but ‘all is not bleak either’.

The central scenario calls for positive French economic growth this year and in each of the next two, he said.

Moreover, inflation would return to ‘[b]elow 2% in France and around 2% in the euro average’ in two years, he said. Monetary authorities ‘will do what is necessary’ for this, he said.

The normalisation of monetary policy ‘means that we are gradually returning to more normal interest rates, for the financing of States, businesses and households’, he explained.

A third positive aspect of the French economy was that unemployment would remain historically low, he said, undershooting 8% by 2024.

‘This corresponds to the fact that we have companies that still want to hire today, despite the shock of Ukraine, and which moreover have high recruitment difficulties’, he said. ‘There is a certain dynamism of the companies.’