By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Friday said the war in the Middle East had made the outlook “significantly more uncertain” and reiterated that the ECB would stay data-dependent and refrain from pre-committing to any rate path.
17 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Madis Müller on Friday said the ECB must remain alert to inflation risks from the war in Iran but does not yet have a clear basis for raising interest rates.
17 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar and David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) - Following is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Econostream on 16 April with Alexander Demarco, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank:
17 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick and Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – June, rather than the April 30 policy meeting, would be the more appropriate point for the European Central Bank to judge whether the war-driven energy shock is feeding through into broader inflation, according to ECB Governing Council member Alexander Demarco.
17 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Primož Dolenc on Thursday said lower energy prices following the recent truce in the Iran war had moved the euro area economy back toward the ECB’s baseline scenario and could mean no rate hikes will be needed.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said on Thursday that the central bank should communicate its policy decisions in a more “nuanced and subtle way,” rather than conveying full certainty about its actions.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member François Villeroy de Galhau said on Wednesday that there was “no rush” for the ECB to act, and that focusing on April was “premature.”
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Madis Müller said on Thursday that, given the data available by the April 30 meeting, it may be difficult to determine whether the ECB should be worry about possible ramifications of the energy shock.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said on Thursday that the ECB will have some data to review ahead of the April Governing Council meeting, but that it will be too early for the data to be “decisive.”
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mārtiņš Kazāks said on Thursday that market expectations of two rate hikes in 2026 were “reasonable,” adding that a 25bp move would largely serve as a signaling step.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel on Thursday portrayed the euro area as having largely restored macroeconomic and financial stability, while arguing that the bloc’s central economic challenge had shifted to reviving growth.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olli Rehn on Thursday said the ECB would need to tighten monetary policy “decisively and forcefully” if the war in Iran became protracted, generated second-round effects on prices and wages and threatened to disanchor inflation expectations.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – With April increasingly looking like a meeting the European Central Bank’s Governing Council is keeping alive out of convention rather than conviction, June now risks being treated as the move that inevitably follows. That may be too simplistic.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member François Villeroy de Galhau said on Thursday that the ECB was not in “precipitation mode,” and that hiking in April would be premature.
16 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Álvaro Santos Pereira said on Wednesday that there was considerable uncertainty surrounding the second-round effects of the energy shock stemming from the Middle East conflict.
15 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel said Wednesday that the ECB could afford to take time assessing the inflation implications of the Middle East war, arguing that policymakers were starting from a relatively favorable position even as they watched closely for stronger pass-through and second-round effects.
15 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member José Luis Escrivá on Wednesday said the ECB’s central scenario had tracked recent developments “very closely” over the last six weeks, but cautioned that policymakers could not be sure markets were fully capturing the risk of further supply disruptions or that standard models could reliably estimate the effects of such shocks.
15 April 2026 Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel said on Wednesday that inflation seemed to be well anchored to the ECB’s 2% target, but added that this could change.
15 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member José Luis Escrivá on Wednesday said long-term inflation expectations had so far remained broadly stable despite the Iran war shock, while warning that central banks were operating under “extremely high uncertainty.”
15 April 2026 Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone on Wednesday said tokenization could sharply improve the efficiency of finance, but only if central banks help provide the settlement asset, collateral framework, and common standards needed for the new ecosystem to scale.
15 April 2026 Central Bank News