(Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank will “reasonably soon” start looking into its monetary-policy strategy — with results expected in the second half of next year, President Christine Lagarde said.
Speaking after officials kept interest rates unchanged, Lagarde said policymakers will assess the results of their last major review rather than launching into another extensive overhaul – confirming an earlier Bloomberg report.
The ECB’s inflation target of 2% and the publication of a Federal Reserve-style dot plot indicating policymakers’ expectations for interest rates won’t be up for debate, she added.
“We will assess what has been achieved, where we have been short, where we can improve, and that will be a not the lengthy process that we had, but a shorter process,” she said. “It will it will start reasonably soon, and you should expect outcome in the second half of 2025.”
The last strategy review ended in 2021 and resulted in a new definition of price stability — making it explicitly symmetric around a medium-term goal of 2%. While the new exercise will be less wide-ranging it could have significant implications and shape future interest-rate actions and the ECB’s response to crises.
“The inflation target will not be debated,” Lagarde said. “It can be debated, you know, in the future by a future president of the ECB but not on my watch. And the other item that also we will exclude is the discussion of the dot plots.”
--With assistance from Alexander Weber, Alessandra Migliaccio, Bastian Benrath-Wright, Craig Stirling, Andrew Langley, Jennifer Duggan, William Horobin, Marilen Martin, Celine Imensek and Chiara Albanese.
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