ECB’s Stournaras: ‘We Can Cut Interest Rates at Every Meeting’

18 November 2024

ECB’s Stournaras: ‘We Can Cut Interest Rates at Every Meeting’
Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece, at the ECB’s Governing Council meeting in Ljubljana on October 17, 2024. Photo by Adrian Petty/ECB.

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras on Monday said he expected multiple consecutive ECB rate cuts.

In an interview with Politico, Stournaras, who heads the Bank of Greece, said, ‘If inflation continues on its path, we can cut interest rates at every meeting so long as we are in restrictive territory.’

These would continue until rates were at a neutral level and thus around 2%, he said, according to Politico.

At the same time, Stournaras predicted that 2% inflation, the ECB’s target, would be reached durably in 2Q of next year.

The implications of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency in the US were unclear, but tariffs could work either way in terms of inflation, he said.

‘The best thing for us to do is to wait for the new president and the new government to be in place, and then to reconsider our position’, he said.