(Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank needs to continue taking “decisive steps” on interest rates, according to Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel.

“It would be wrong to hold back on further decisive steps for fear of a downturn,” the German central banker said Friday in Frankfurt. With 200 basis points of hikes at the last three meetings, the Governing Council has “made important steps on the path of monetary-policy normalization. But we cannot stop here.”

With euro-area inflation at an all-time high, Nagel, who’s among the ECB’s most hawkish officials, has repeatedly called for additional increases in borrowing costs. At the same time, a recession in the region looks increasingly likely.

“If high inflation threatens to become entrenched, we must resolutely raise our key rates further and adopt a restrictive stance,” he said. “If we don’t act decisively now, we run the risk of having to tighten monetary policy all the more later.”

Nagel also renewed his push for the ECB to start to shrink the roughly €5 trillion ($5.2 trillion) stash of bonds purchased as stimulus during recent crises -- a process known as quantitative tightening.

“We should start reducing the size of our bond holdings at the beginning of next year by no longer fully reinvesting all maturing bonds,” he said. “The additional tightening would help to bring inflation down. And it would underline our strong determination to bring inflation back to our target.”

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