ECB’s Scicluna: “If We’re Close to the 2% Target, Why Mess up?”

11 November 2025

By David Barwick – TIRANA (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Edward Scicluna on Tuesday suggested that changing interest rates in the current, relatively balanced policy environment would amount to tempting fate.

Speaking at a conference of the Bank of Albania, Scicluna, who heads the Central Bank of Malta, noted the keen interest of financial markets in whether the ECB would cut rates again, but insisted that monetary authorities “don’t have any [specific] cycle in mind”, because the “shocks and uncertainties” to which Europe was subject made it impossible for the ECB to know what would happen.

The ECB thus took a meeting-by-meeting, data-driven approach to policymaking, he said approvingly.

“As long as we have a balance between all these” economic factors, “but at the same time a resilient economy,” the need to adjust monetary policy was not apparent, he said.

“If we’re close to the 2% target, why mess up?” he said. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“This is the situation we’re in,” he added.