By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank policymakers said at their September meeting that higher long-term interest rates could materially restrain growth and inflation and might have implications for the appropriate level of policy rates, according to the account of the meeting published Thursday.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member and chief economist Philip Lane said Thursday that euro area wage growth had not shown a noticeable acceleration, suggesting that the latest inflation increase had yet to generate significant second-round effects.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras said Thursday that the absence of significant second-round inflation effects argued for moderation in further monetary policy tightening, even though repeated supply shocks and additional demand pressures meant the ECB could not remain inactive.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Pierre Wunsch said Thursday that he was unconvinced by arguments for raising the ECB's minimum reserve requirement on banks, warning that using the measure to reduce central bank losses could turn it into a quasi-fiscal instrument.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Emmanuel Moulin said Thursday that higher energy prices had not so far developed into broader inflationary pressure, with only limited indirect effects and no evidence of second-round effects.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olaf Sleijpen said Thursday that medium- and longer-term inflation expectations remained well anchored despite a persistent energy shock, while he did not expect second-round inflation effects.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Primož Dolenc said Thursday that persistently elevated inflation and unresolved geopolitical conflicts supported a move toward a more restrictive monetary policy stance, while leaving the timing and size of any further rate increases open.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said in an interview published Thursday that the legislative text needed for the digital euro should be ready by the end of this year, with the first test payments taking place in less than 12 months.
8 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) - European Central Bank Governing Council member Álvaro Santos Pereira said on Wednesday that policymakers were not currently seeing second-round inflation effects or signs of inflation expectations becoming de-anchored, while warning that energy prices remained a source of upside risk.
7 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Primož Dolenc said Wednesday that ECB interest rates were currently set at a level that left policymakers room to respond as the economic and inflation outlook evolved.
7 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Emmanuel Moulin said on Wednesday that he saw no need at the moment for the ECB to intervene in French bond markets.
7 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Frank Elderson said Tuesday that ECB Banking Supervision would launch a review in mid-October of outstanding supervisory measures, reducing follow-up on lower-severity issues and potentially closing some where further assessment was no longer warranted.
6 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said on Tuesday that the introduction of a digital euro would not lead to aggregate deposit outflows from euro area banks under normal conditions even with a holding limit as high as €3,000, citing ECB analysis.
6 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olli Rehn said Tuesday that rising long-term interest rates were slowing growth and reducing the pass-through of higher energy prices into other prices and wages, while stressing that heightened uncertainty justified retaining a meeting-by-meeting approach to interest rates.
6 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane is showing a pronounced reluctance to translate the latest deterioration in the outlook for energy prices into any explicit case, let alone a stronger one, for further interest rate hikes, while increasingly emphasizing forces that could reduce the amount of additional tightening required.
6 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane on Tuesday said higher long-term interest rates would weigh on euro area growth and inflation and would therefore form part of the assessment determining where the ECB’s policy rate needed to go, while the energy shock remained the dominant driver of interest rate policy so far.
6 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank still has a tightening bias, but the speed with which the possibility of an October rate increase has receded, combined with surging long-term yields and the possibility of broader sovereign stress, to our mind raises a question that would have seemed premature only days ago: will the ECB’s next interest rate move even be a hike?
5 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By David Barwick – VIENNA (Econostream) – High public debt, the growing role of non-bank financial institutions and digital innovation could make it increasingly difficult for central banks to distinguish market dysfunction requiring intervention from justified repricing of risk, Bank for International Settlements General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos said Monday.
5 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – SORRENTO, Italy (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Joachim Nagel said on Monday he was concerned about inflation, describing the current picture as “challenging” as sharply higher energy prices add to uncertainty ahead of the ECB’s upcoming policy meeting.
5 October 2026 | Central Bank News
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – The European Central Bank’s tightening bias became more visible again over the past week, according to Econostream’s ECB Tone Meter, although policymakers continued to show little urgency to raise rates again. Much of the index’s increase was driven by a more detailed and clearly hawkish assessment from Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel.
5 October 2026 | Central Bank News