ECB Governing Council held the first in-person meeting in more than a year over the weekend and carried out in-depth discussion about the strategy review. The topics addressed include “the definition and measurement of price stability, the underlying analytical framework, the medium-term orientation, the role of climate change in formulating monetary policy, and the modernisation of policy communication.”

“It was good to meet again in-person and the hilly Taunus countryside was ideal to reconnect after months of only digital meetings”, ECB President, Christine Lagarde, said. “I am glad we were able to have in-depth discussions and we made good progress in shaping the concrete features of our future monetary policy strategy at our retreat.”

Full statement here.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann told newspaper Handelsblatt, “with further progress in coping with the pandemic, hopefully the crisis-related special measures will soon be reduced.”

“When the emergency for which the PEPP was created is over, it must be ended,” he added.

Weidmann also rejected the idea that some PEPP’s flexibility could be transferred to the standing APP after PEPP ends. “When this exceptional situation is over, such a high degree of flexibility is no longer appropriate,” he said.

ECB chief economist Philip Lane told Bloomberg TV that it’s “unnecessary and premature” to talk about tapering the asset purchase program.

“We know from September there’s going to be a lot of things happening,” he added. “It’s not a turn on a dime situation where we’re going to know everything at a point in time, but of course we’ll know a lot more over the summer.”

“Going back to September, we will have new forecasts, but remember we have a very strong forecast for quarter three, but quarter three is not over until the end of September,” he added. “We’re not necessarily going to have every piece of hard data you want to have going into the September meeting.”