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.

Based on an extensive review of ECB commentary (see our ECB Comment Recap this Friday), the following traces how what began as open April optionality gradually gave way to June as the more natural point for judgment.

The earliest phase, from March 19 through roughly March 27, was still mostly an “April is live” phase. Policymakers were cautious, but many still spoke as though April could be the meeting at which the ECB might act. The clearest examples are Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel on March 20 saying more “reliable data” should be available by April 30; Latvijas Banka Governor Mārtiņš Kazāks on March 24 saying “Of course we won’t delay and we will raise rates … We’ll see. April is very close”; Nagel again on March 25 calling an April hike “certainly an option” and saying the ECB should not shy away from it just because it was early; Central Bank of Ireland Governor Gabriel Makhlouf on March 20 calling the next meeting “definitely” live; and Belgian National Bank Governor Pierre Wunsch on March 27 saying he was patient “today,” but in April might not be.

Of course, some caution was still expressed, but mainly about conditions and uncertainty, not yet about relocating the likely decision point to June.

The first real building blocks of an April-deferral narrative appear in late March and early April, when policymakers start stressing that the April evidence may be too thin. Dutch National Bank President Olaf Sleijpen on March 24 said that new data by end-April would still be “limited” and that “the complete picture will not have emerged.” ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos on March 26 said what mattered most was more information on the conflict. Banque de France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau on March 26 and March 30 called timetable talk “premature.” One can take that for granted; more significantly, Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel in a speech on March 27 proposed patience, saying that “there is no need to rush into action.”

After that came the first genuinely explicit June fallback: Banka Slovenije Governor Primož Dolenc on April 1 said that if there was not enough information by April 30, it would “probably” be worthwhile to wait until June, when the ECB would have updated projections. Austrian National Bank Governor Martin Kocher on April 2 and Bank of Lithuania Governor Gediminas Šimkus on April 2 reinforced the point from a different angle by saying it was too early to know whether enough evidence would be available by April.

Still, the trend at this point remained in embryonic form: less “June is where this goes” and more simply “April may not give us enough.” The point at which it became a mature trend rather than scattered caution is April 15-16.

On April 15, Schnabel said the ECB’s broadly neutral stance meant it could “afford to take the time that is needed” and did “not need to rush into action.” The same day, Kazāks said markets expected two hikes “starting with June” and that he had nothing against that “at the moment.” Also on April 15, the tone from several speakers was plainly less urgent than it was in late March.

On April 16 the shift became unmistakable. Importantly, ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane said that by April 30 there would be survey data, but that it was “too early to have anything too decisive.” Villeroy said “a focus on April would be premature” and that to “bet on April” would be premature. Dolenc said things would be “considerably” clearer by June. Eesti Pank Governor Madis Müller said it might “be difficult” by April 30 to know whether the ECB should be worried, and that by June there would be “a lot more information,” including projections and inflation expectations. Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn said that “calm judgment will prevail over haste.” Even as April remained formally live, the focus was clearly shifting.

By April 17-18, the trend was gathering visible steam. Müller on April 17 said there was not much hard evidence of second-round effects and that it was difficult to argue there was an obvious case to raise rates. Central Bank of Malta Governor Alexander Demarco on April 17 said the April meeting was very close and, apart from the corporate telephone survey, there were not many signals that could come from the data itself; he added that the survey would have to show “significant price hikes” to require action. The same day he called June “the more natural horizon for judgment this time.” On April 18 he went further, saying the bigger risk was to rush into raising rates and do undue damage. Kazāks on April 17 said the absence so far of spillovers and second-round effects “reduces somewhat the necessity to move instantaneously.” The burden of proof had plainly shifted against moving in April.

On April 20, ECB President Christine Lagarde gave institutional backing to the patience line. Her formulation in a speech in Berlin that the “double uncertainty” over the duration of the shock and the breadth of pass-through “argues for gathering more information before drawing firm conclusions” comes close to a synthesized official rationale for not using April, barring a major change.

In brief, the first seeds appear between March 24 and April 2, when policymakers begin to say that April will offer only limited evidence and that June may be preferable if clarity is lacking. But the real acceleration occurs in the April 15-17 window. That is when the line moves from “April is live but uncertain” to “April is live in principle, but June is the more natural, better-informed, and increasingly preferred horizon.” By April 20 that idea is entrenched.

The chronology, then, is fairly clear: the first seeds of delay appeared in late March, the June fallback became explicit with Dolenc on April 1, and the shift turned into a broader pattern on April 15-17, when Schnabel, Lane, Müller, Dolenc, Kazāks, Demarco, Rehn, and Villeroy all, in different ways, suggested that April either lacked decisive evidence or was simply too early. The question, then, is where that change in tone was most visible.

Where the Tone Shift Was Most Visible

Müller shows one of the clearest changes. In our interview with him published on March 27, he was still saying every meeting was live. On March 31 he said April rate changes could not be ruled out if energy stayed high. By April 16-17, however, he had moved to saying it might be difficult by April 30 to know enough, that June would bring much more information, and that there was no obvious case to hike.

Kazāks also shifts quite noticeably. In late March he was among the more proactive voices: on March 24 he said, “Of course we won’t delay and we will raise rates,” adding that April was very close. By mid-April, however, he was talking about being in a “comfortable situation,” accepting market pricing for hikes starting in June, and saying the lack of spillovers reduced the need to move immediately. He did not turn dovish, but he clearly became less enthusiastic regarding April.

Nagel cooled on April as well, though less dramatically. On March 20 and March 25 he sounded fairly open to April, even saying the ECB should not shy away from it. By April 15 and April 17, his emphasis had shifted to lack of clarity and uncertain medium-term effects. He still insisted April had to stay open, so his change is more from guarded hawkishness to guarded optionality than from April to June outright.

Dolenc made a very visible transition. On March 27 he still said that by the end of April there would be more clarity and a more informed reflection would be possible. By April 1 he had introduced June as the fallback if April lacked information. By April 8 he was explicitly saying there was no rush and the ECB could wait for future meetings with significantly more information. By April 16 he was saying June would be “considerably” clearer and even outlining a baseline under which there might be no hikes at all. That is one of the strongest pro-deferral evolutions in the entire Governing Council.

Villeroy is different. He did not really “turn” so much as maintain an anti-calendar line almost throughout. Already on March 26 and March 30 he was calling timetable talk premature. His April 16 remarks are stronger, but they are an intensification of an existing stance, not a reversal. Of course, his case is somewhat special, as he is not as fond of low inflation as he is of low borrowing costs.

Rehn and Schnabel also look more consistent than shifting. Rehn was cautious from very early on, including his March 25 invocation of the 2011 mistake. Schnabel on March 27 already said there was no need to rush. Indeed, we think those comments by Schnabel were the first clear sign of an emergent change in ECB thinking.

Lagarde’s sequence is also notable. In March and even on April 14 she was still mostly framing things in balanced optionality terms: agility, no bias, no predetermined path. By April 20, however, she has moved to a much clearer information-gathering justification. That is not a formal signal that April is dead, but it is a clear reinforcement of the drift away from April.

In the aggregate, the comments show a shift that was neither sudden nor random. What began in late March as caution about limited evidence and war-related uncertainty became, by mid-April, a much broader change in emphasis, with some of the Council’s more consequential voices increasingly framing June as the meeting more likely to permit a confident judgment.

April never ceased to be live in the formal sense. But by the time Lagarde on April 20 argued for gathering more information before drawing firm conclusions, the practical burden of proof had plainly moved: no longer onto those arguing for patience, but onto anyone still making the case for action on April 30.