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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mārtiņš Kazāks said on Wednesday that he was comfortable with market expectations of two hikes in 2026 starting in June but added that current flat real rates were consistent with looking through the energy shock arising from the Middle East conflict.
15 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras on Wednesday welcomed his nomination for a third consecutive term as governor of the Bank of Greece, calling it “a profound honour” and a sign of the government’s continued confidence in him.
15 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday that an energy shock from the Middle East conflict, if neither short-lived nor long-lasting but rather somewhere in between, may not prompt action.
14 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – We argued on March 27 that European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel had given the Governing Council “room to wait.” On April 1 we said April 30 still looked live, but that it sounded “less and less like the ECB is trying to lead markets there,” a point we sharpened further on April 7 and April 8 . President Christine Lagarde’s Bloomberg TV interview on Tuesday strongly reinforces that line.
14 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gabriel Makhlouf said on Tuesday that the ECB would need to carefully calibrate its response to the impact of the Middle East conflict to avoid exacerbating the situation.
14 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – WASHINGTON (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday that the ECB had no tightening bias but should be “agile” and “ready” to move in any direction.
14 April 2026
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Olli Rehn said on Tuesday that although the war in the Middle East would unavoidably lift headline inflation this year, its medium-term impact on inflation remained unclear, as the conflict also slowed euro area growth and complicated the ECB’s policy calculus.
14 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos said on Monday that an interest rate hike will hinge on second-round inflation effects arising from the Middle East conflict.
13 April 2026
By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Boris Vujčić said on Monday that the current situation remains close to the ECB’s baseline scenario despite the most recent surge in energy prices.
13 April 2026