ECB’s Nagel: Inflation ‘Beast’ Has Been Tamed

30 January 2024

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel on Tuesday said that inflation in the euro area has been controlled.

Speaking in an event organised by the Forum for a New Economy in Berlin, Nagel, who heads the German Bundesbank, said, ‘I am now convinced that we have tamed that greedy beast’, using the term with which he had previously referred to inflation.

The direction in which inflation was heading was positive, he said, adding, ‘I am convinced that we will get very, very close to the inflation target of 2% in 2025.’

He did not comment on the timing of interest rate cuts and said that the ECB’s decisions would be made on a meeting-by-meeting basis and rely on incoming data.

Core inflation was still relatively high, and it was necessary to wait for new data to consider changes in the current stance, he said.

‘I do not believe that we have a very restrictive monetary policy’, he said.