By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said on Wednesday that the battle against inflation was not fully won. 

In an ECB podcast, Lane said that in June 2025 the ECB was in ‘an important transition phase’, with its latest monetary policy decision motivated by two considerations: reflecting the progress made in returning to target and making sure that deviations from target remain temporary. 

Inflation was ‘around’ the 2% target, he said, but the battle against it was not ‘entirely over, we need to see services inflation come down.’ 

‘And essentially what we want to make sure on the forward basis is that any time we see a potential deviation from 2%, so long as it’s not entirely trivial, small and self-reversing we need to make sure our monetary policy will bring inflation back to 2%’, he said. 

The ECB was at a phase where backward-looking factors still drove its last decision, but forward-looking factors were also considered, he said. 

‘That is a decision that is different in nature from some of the previous decisions’, he added. 

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