By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gediminas Šimkus said on Wednesday that the ECB should refrain from raising interest rates at the April 30 Governing Council meeting.
22 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said on Wednesday that the ECB cannot yet determine whether the Middle East conflict will be a temporary shock or a more persistent one until its duration becomes clear.
22 April 2026
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank did not abruptly take an April 30 rate hike off the table. Instead, starting in late March and gathering pace by mid-April, policymakers increasingly stopped preparing markets for action at the next meeting and started buying time. April remained formally live, but messaging pointed more and more clearly toward June as the meeting at which the Governing Council expected to know enough to judge whether the Iran shock was merely painful or genuinely inflationary in the medium term.
22 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras said Wednesday that the ECB should hold off on raising interest rates for now, adding that he believes the Middle East conflict could end soon.
22 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Frank Elderson defended the ECB’s climate-related work on Wednesday as a necessary part of its mandate, arguing that price stability, financial stability, and bank resilience cannot be safeguarded if policymakers ignore the economic effects of climate and nature shocks.
22 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane on Wednesday argued that the Eurozone suffers from an “undersupply of euro-denominated safe assets,” calling for a larger stock of common debt and other instruments that could deepen market liquidity, strengthen financial stability, and reinforce the euro’s international role.
22 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mārtiņš Kazāks on Wednesday said the ECB was under no immediate pressure to raise interest rates, arguing that inflation expectations remained contained and that spillovers from higher energy prices had so far been limited.
22 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday that the ECB’s monetary policy “must be prudent” and keep a “cool head,” stressing the importance of closely monitoring developments in the Middle East conflict.
21 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel on Tuesday said the inflation effects of artificial intelligence were uncertain and warned that central banks should stay alert, arguing that while AI could lift productivity and ease some price pressures, it could also boost demand, power consumption and pricing risks.
21 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s speech in Berlin on Monday fit neatly into the pattern of recent ECB communication. Patient but not complacent, it was above all an effort to explain why the ECB still does not know enough to draw robust near-term policy conclusions.
21 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Monday that the uncertainty surrounding the Middle East energy shock argued for waiting for more information before drawing firm monetary-policy conclusions, while reiterating that the ECB stood ready to act as needed.
20 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – OMFIF’s new survey on who should succeed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is interesting chiefly as a snapshot of elite chatter, because it treats the ECB presidency as if the position were being filled by a search committee weighing CVs against a competency matrix.
20 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olli Rehn said on Monday that it was “easy to agree” with the International Monetary Fund’s recommendation to central banks about monitoring the situation in the Middle East “calmly” as long as inflation expectations remain anchored.
20 April 2026
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We return from the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington yet more convinced that treating a June hike as the inevitable byproduct of an April hold understates the risk that June, too, will prove too early.
20 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras on Monday said the ECB’s next interest rate decision would depend heavily on whether the war in the Middle East had ended by the April 30 meeting, suggesting that a halt in the fighting would strengthen the case against tightening.
20 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Álvaro Santos Pereira said on Monday that the Middle East conflict has not yet had a “dramatic” effect on the euro area economy, though this could shift depending on how widely and how long the conflict continues.
20 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Alexander Demarco on Saturday said the ECB would be better off waiting for more clarity on the inflation fallout from the Iran war than risking unnecessary economic damage by tightening too soon, signaling that the April 30 meeting may come too early for a rate increase.
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By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – Econostream’s ECB Tone Meter has reversed its recent hawkish uptick, with the Governing Council still in slightly hawkish territory but less firmly so, while the Executive Board has returned to neutral.
17 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mārtiņš Kazāks on Friday said the ECB still had time to assess the economic fallout from the Iran war and could even end up cutting rates if supply disruptions were to push the Eurozone economy sharply weaker.
17 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Martin Kocher on Friday said policymakers should keep their options open ahead of the April 30 meeting, arguing that it was right to show resolve on inflation without front-running an outcome that might not materialize.
17 April 2026