The European Central Bank is likely to keep raising interest rates beyond its next policy meeting to tackle stubbornly high inflation, members of its rate-setting governing council said on Friday.
Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel, one of the more hawkish ECB council members, said there was still “a long way to go” to reach the central bank’s inflation target of 2 per cent. That was even after rate-setters raised the benchmark deposit rate by a quarter-point to 3.5 per cent on Thursday, its highest level since 2001.
“We may need to keep raising rates after the summer break,” Nagel said in a speech in Amsterdam. His comments went further than ECB president Christine Lagarde did in the press conference following Thursday’s decision, in which she only said rate-setters were “very likely” to raise rates again in July.