(Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank policy maker Peter Praet said he doesn’t believe President Mario Draghi intended to send a new signal when he said the pickup in underlying euro-area inflation is “relatively vigorous.”

The euro fell after Praet, the ECB’s chief economist, made the remarks at an event in London on Tuesday. The single currency jumped the previous day when Draghi spoke at the European Parliament, and investors bet on a faster pace of interest-rate hikes over the next two years.

“I saw indeed yesterday the market reactions,” Praet said. “They reverted a little bit later, I think rightly, because I don’t think there was anything new in his communication. Basically what we say is price pressures remain subdued and it will take a long time before we get close to 2 percent.”

The euro was little changed at $1.1749 at 9:32 a.m. London time, after earlier climbing as high as $1.1774. It jumped to a three month high of $1.1815 on Monday.

Inflation data for this month to be published Friday is expected to show the headline rate of inflation accelerating to 2.1 percent from 2 percent. The underlying rate is predicted to be just 1.1 percent, though still an improvement on August’s 1 percent.

Rate Path

Policy makers already intend to end their asset-purchase program at the end of this year amid the improving price outlook. They expect interest rates to stay at record lows “at least through the summer of 2019.” Investors are betting that borrowing costs will start rising late next year.

Praet’s appearance is the first of five speaking engagements he has scheduled this week. Two events in London on Tuesday are closed to media, and the ECB doesn’t plan to publish his comments. One of those is at Omfif, a think tank for central banking. The other is hosted by InTouch Capital Markets, which describes itself as a provider of financial-market information run by a team of former bank traders, brokers and portfolio managers.

To contact the reporters on this story: Carolynn Look in London at clook4@bloomberg.net;Zoe Schneeweiss in London at zschneeweiss@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Gordon at pgordon6@bloomberg.net, Jana Randow

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