ECB Forum on Central Banking 2026 - Introductory speech by Christine Lagarde

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the ECB Forum on Central Banking. Over the past 15 years, the euro area faced an environment of extraordinary pressures that called for unconventional responses. The sovereign debt crisis brought us towards the effective lower bound. The pandemic collapsed demand further. We responded with asset purchases and refinancing operations to support the economy, and new instruments to address fragmentation. Our toolbox expanded in other ways too: forward guidance with lift-off criteria, sequencing commitments, links between different policy instruments. When the environment reversed and Russia cut off our access to natural gas, we responded with a conventional instrument used in unconventional ways: the fastest tightening cycle in our history, raising rates in increments we had never used before. But in today’s environment, monet Lagarde Says Europe Is Getting More Resilient to Economic Shocks ECB's President Lagarde: it is not accurate to describe the June move as an insurance hike.

The head of the European Central Bank defended its June 11 rate hike as justified to ward off real inflationary pressures and said it wasn’t just a mere “insurance hike.” ECB head Christine Lagarde said Monday that without the quarter percentage-point increase, inflation could have lingered above the bank’s 2% target into 2028. “Some have characterized our ...

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