ECB Governing Council member Olli Rehn said on Saturday, “If we reacted strongly to inflation in the short term, we would probably cause economic growth to stop. It’s better to look beyond short-term inflation and look at what inflation is in 2023, 2024.” He expected inflation to be close to the 2% target in the coming years.
“We will have time to react in the March meeting and in later meetings if it looks like the situation is markedly different than it now appears,” Rehn added.
Another Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said, “the monetary policy stance remains expansionary, though the gradual normalization will continue at a pace consistent with the economic recovery and changes in the outlook for prices.”
“I do not believe that the overall picture underlying this stance has changed significantly,” Visco said. Still, “in the short term, there has been an increase in the risk of consumer prices growing faster than expected and production activity growing more slowly.”
