{"id":226701,"date":"2025-06-30T13:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T13:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226701\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T13:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T13:24:09","slug":"ecb-warns-ai-and-geopolitics-make-inflation-fight-tougher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226701\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB warns AI and geopolitics make inflation fight tougher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Keeping inflation in check will become harder as trade tensions and other \u201cstructural shifts\u201d make the world more volatile, the European Central Bank has warned, as it vowed it would fight high price growth with \u201cforceful or persistent\u201d actions. <\/p>\n

European rate-setters have tweaked their strategy to emphasise the risk of sudden but persistent increases in inflation, after they were caught out by a jump in price rises in 2021-22 partly due to the war in Ukraine. The previous strategy focused on the then-relevant risk of deflation.<\/p>\n

\u201cStructural shifts such as geopolitical and economic fragmentation and increasing use of artificial intelligence make the inflation environment more uncertain,\u201d the ECB warned in a monetary policy strategy statement on Monday.<\/p>\n

The ECB<\/a> is keeping the medium-term 2 per cent inflation target that was introduced four years ago, stressing that it will fight \u201clarge, sustained deviations of inflation from target in either direction\u201d. It vowed to apply a \u201cforceful or persistent\u201d response to do so, adding that it was bracing to fight \u201clarger target deviations in both directions\u201d in future. <\/p>\n

ECB president Christine Lagarde told journalists on Monday that while the new environment gave citizens \u201cmany reasons to worry\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009one thing that they do not need to worry about is our commitment to price stability\u201d.<\/p>\n

The central bank has drastically changed its monetary policy since 2022. It first rushed to end its bond-buying programme and then raised interest rates from minus 0.5 per cent to a record high of 4 per cent within 14 months.<\/p>\n

It then halved borrowing costs to 2 per cent since June last year as inflation moderated. Investors are betting on one more quarter-point rate cut by the end of the year, according to Reuters data. <\/p>\n

Inflation has slowed from its peak of almost 11 per cent in late 2022 and fell below the medium-term 2 per cent <\/a>target last month. <\/p>\n

Interest rates will remain as the preferred policy method, but the ECB will keep the controversial bond-buying tools it introduced during the years of ultra-low inflation and negative interest rates and which dramatically inflated its balance sheet, it said. The document is the first review of its policy since 2021, with Lagarde saying that the next review was planned for 2030.<\/p>\n

The central bank said it would keep the options to buy assets and to provide cheap, longer-running funding to banks \u2014 either to safeguard \u201cthe smooth functioning of monetary policy transmission\u201d or when interest rates \u201care close to the lower bound\u201d.<\/p>\n

ING\u2019s global head of macro Carsten Brzeski said that the ECB had given itself \u201ca pat on the back\u201d, adding that the update will \u201chardly have any new implications for the ECB over the coming months\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-226701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114772539036862823","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}