By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gabriel Makhlouf said Thursday that every monetary policy meeting remained live amid heightened uncertainty and that upside risks to inflation persisted.

Makhlouf, who heads the Central Bank of Ireland, told Bloomberg Television that policymakers could neither rule in nor rule out further action at the ECB’s next meeting on October 29.

“At a time of uncertainty, every meeting is a live meeting for the European Central Bank,” Makhlouf said when asked specifically about the October meeting. “You can’t rule out anything that might happen in future meetings, nor can you rule them in.”

Makhlouf said financial markets understood the ECB’s commitment to returning inflation to its 2% target, while declining to assess whether current market pricing of the rate outlook was appropriate.

“Markets understand that we’re committed to delivering on our 2% inflation target, and at the moment the numbers aren’t as strong as we want them to be,” he said. “I’m not in the business of saying whether markets are right or wrong.”

Makhlouf said the ECB was not currently seeing worrying second-round effects from the energy shock, but warned that the shock itself was persisting and that inflation risks remained tilted upward.

“At the moment, we’re certainly not seeing signs of concerning second-round effects but it’s pretty clear that the shock, the energy shock that started with the war in Iran isn’t going away,” he said. “The risks to inflation remain on the upside.”

Makhlouf also said the current level of interest rates remained within the neutral range, while declining to identify a precise threshold at which monetary policy would become restrictive.

“Where we are now remains within the neutral band,” he said. “There’s theory of neutral rates, but then there’s also the judgments that we have to exercise in making our monetary policy decision.”

“So I’m not really going to go into, ‘is there a defining moment on whether we’re restrictive or not?’” Makhlouf said.