In a Bloomberg TV interview, ECB President Christine Lagarde said, “we’re moving (deposit rate) very likely into positive territory at the end of the third quarter.”

“When you’re out of negative (rates) you can be at zero, you can be slightly above zero. This is something that we will determine on the basis of our projections and … forward guidance,” she explained.

Still, Lagarde emphasized the graduality and ECB’s policy adjustments. “I don’t think we are in a situation of surging demand at the moment,” Lagarde said. “It’s definitely an inflation that is driven by the supply side of the economy.”

ECB Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau said at the World Economic Forum, “if you look at President Lagarde’s statement this morning, the deal is probably done because there is a growing consensus” on a July rate hike. He added that Eurozone growth remained resilient. the main short term problem was inflation.

Villeroy apparent referred to a blog post by ECB President Christine Lagarde. She said in the post of the expectation that net asset purchases under the APP to “end very early in the third quarter”. “This would allow us a rate lift-off at our meeting in July, in line with our forward guidance,” she said.

In a blog post, ECB President Christine Lagarde said she expects net asset purchases under the APP to “end very early in the third quarter”. “This would allow us a rate lift-off at our meeting in July, in line with our forward guidance,” she said.

Also, “based on the current outlook, we are likely to be in a position to exit negative interest rates by the end of the third quarter,” she added.

Looking forward, the “next stage” of monetary policy normalization would “need to be guided by the evolution of the medium-term inflation outlook”.

“If we see inflation stabilizing at 2% over the medium term, a progressive further normalization of interest rates towards the neutral rate will be appropriate,” she said. “But the pace and overall scale of the adjustment cannot be determined ex ante.”

Full blog post here.

ECB President Christine Lagarde told Dutch television over the weekend, “we are going to follow the path of stopping net asset purchase. Then, sometime after that — which could be a few weeks — hike interest rates.” That’s seen as an indication that a rate hike could happen in July, after stopping asset purchases in June.

Governing Council member Klass Knot floated the idea of a 50bps hike earlier. But Lagarde said, “it’s not something that I can tell you at this point in time.” She emphasized, “we need to make sure that this is going gradually enough so that we don’t put the break on this car that is moving. We have to lift the accelerator for sure to slow inflation but we cannot be breaking any speed.”

ECB Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said in a BloombergTV interview, “we can move gradually, raising interest rates in the coming months.” June is too early as the central bank will be ending net asset purchase. But, “we will move after that — after that, means perhaps July.”

“Now I think that we can move out of this negative territory,” Visco said, referring to the deposit rate, which has been negative since 2014. “Gradual means in my view that we have to understand that we should move without creating uncertainty in the market.”

Separately, Governing Council member Madis Muller said the focus needs to be on fighting high inflation. Martins Kazaks said he hoped the first hike will “take place in July”.