ECB’s Sleijpen: We Are in a Good Place, but Risks and Uncertainty Call for Vigilance

17 October 2025

By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olaf Sleijpen said on Friday that the ECB was in a good place but that risks required ongoing vigilance.

In an interview on Bloomberg TV, Sleijpen, who heads De Nederlandsche Bank, said that the ECB was “in a good place – that doesn’t mean that you’ll always stay in that place.”

He stressed that the ECB had the necessary tools to act as necessary, which he described as part of being in a “good place.”

Medium term inflation in the Eurozone was expected to be around the ECB’s 2% target and there was “more or less full employment,” he said.

“But having said that, the potential growth in the euro area is actually relatively low compared to the US,” he said. “I think a lot needs to be done in this context but that’s not for monetary policy, it is for structural policy.”

Sleijpen said that the European economy had proven more resilient than expected, outperforming forecasts from earlier in the year. Still, he cautioned that tariffs would weigh on growth and could affect inflation, especially in the United States.

“At the same time there are a lot of risks out there, and there is a lot of uncertainty, so it is very important that we remain vigilant in this respect,” he said.