The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, said on Sunday, that any pause in raising interest rates at the meeting of the bank’s monetary policy committee may be followed by another increase.
Lagarde told the French Le Figaro newspaper that at the next meeting in September, there may be another increase in interest rates, or he may stop raising them.
“Any time there is a pause, in or after September, it won’t necessarily be permanent,” she added.
The comments come after the European Central Bank last week raised interest rates by another quarter of a percentage point, with Lagarde stressing that decisions, starting now, will depend on incoming data.
Christine Lagarde reiterated this position during her interview with Le Figaro on Sunday.
“We live in an environment of uncertainty and we will reassess the situation and our action on a meeting-by-meeting basis,” she said.
“We’re committed to returning inflation to our target in a timely manner, and for that we need a policy that is sufficiently restrictive in terms of level and duration,” she said.
Economists still expect the ECB to raise lending costs again, not necessarily in September.
