ECB’s Lagarde: April Cut Will Depend on Data, Direction of Rates No Longer Clear

6 March 2025

By Marta Vilar – FRANKFURT (Econostream) - European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Thursday declined to endorse the ECB's stock sentence about the direction of rates being clear and suggested that data-dependency was more relevant than ever.

During the press conference following the Council’s meeting, in which the ECB decided to cut each of its three key interest rates by 25bp, Lagarde said that with uncertainty so high, the ECB was ‘not precommitting to any particular rate path, we will be data-dependent more than ever and we will decide meeting by meeting.’

‘We have to reach our destination’, she added, without making any reference as to what the destination would be.

Asked if the direction of travel was still clear, Lagarde said, ‘The landscape that we have at the moment is clouded with uncertainty. And more than ever before, it will require us to be vigilant.’

The ECB will decide to cut or pause in April depending on what data suggest then, she said.

‘I think I have been as clear as I could be on that one’, she maintained.

Under the current circumstances, being more specific ‘would not be very responsible’, she said.

Today’s decision was a consensus and there was no opposition, with Austrian National Bank Governor Robert Holzmann instead abstaining, she said.

The inflation target would not be reached until ‘very early in 2026’, and not late in 2025, according to Lagarde.

‘And that is so because of energy prices’, she said. ‘If you look at energy prices today, whether it's oil or gas, the impact would be seriously different.’