ECB Governing Council member Martins Kazaks said, “given the uncertainty, given how much time is left, there is no need to decide on” what to do with the PEPP purchases after next March. He added, “we will discuss it, but at the moment it would still be premature.”
“It’s quite unlikely that we will come out in late March 2022 and say this is it, we’ve done our job and we terminate it,” Kazaks added. “We would like to warn the markets in advance — but only as much as it’s reasonably possible.”
Kazaks defended ECB’s new forward guidance, and said, it’s “a balanced view on how we may react when we see inflation approaching 2%.” “Is this tying our hands too much or too far into the future? I don’t think so,” He said. “If we find that this is not appropriate for the given economic situation then we can adjust our forward guidance.”
