ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a conference today, “we have to return inflation to 2% in the medium term, and we will do what we have to do, which is to continue hiking interest rates in the next several meetings.”
“Our primary goal is not to create a recession. Our primary objective is price stability and we have to deliver on that. If we were not delivering, it would hurt the economy far more,” she said, adding that the “first destination” of rate hikes will be to reach neutral rate.
Separately, Governing Council member Peter Kazimir indicated that ECB may need to hike again by 75bps next month as inflation remains unacceptably high.
