ECB’s Nagel: Interest Rates Have Likely Plateaued

15 December 2023

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel on Friday said that interest rates had probably plateaued, but that it was too soon to consider cuts.

In an interview with German television news programme ZDF Heute Journal, Nagel, who heads the German Bundesbank, said that there was ‘a high likelihood that after 10 rate increases, we’ve reached the interest rate plateau.’

For predictions of when interest rates would be reduced, however, it remained premature, he said. ‘In my view, it’s much too early to think about when rate cuts might possibly happen.’

‘We’ll decide on the basis of data what’s going to happen in the course of the year’, he said.

There was still ‘some way go’ before price stability was achieved, he said, as inflation was ‘still too high.’