ECB’s Stournaras: We Are ‘Nearly Done’, Best Now to ‘Wait and See’

6 June 2025

ECB’s Stournaras: We Are ‘Nearly Done’, Best Now to ‘Wait and See’
Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece, at the European Central Bank Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal on June 28, 2023. Photo by Sérgio Garcia/ ECB under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras said on Friday that the ECB had almost completed its easing phase.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Stournaras, who heads the Bank of Greece, said that the ECB was ‘nearly done, but with such uncertainty worldwide you can never say it’s done.’

‘Now the best thing is to wait and see’, he said.

If the tariff scenario turned out to be very severe, the ‘effect on demand will be even harder, so more deflationary’, he said.

‘I don’t think Europe will retaliate horizontally, but in specific sectors’, he said. ‘But I don’t expect that, to be honest, I think at the end of the day things will normalise.’

It was likely that China would divert cheap exports to Europe and that would imply more deflation, he said.

 

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