Christine Lagarde: Back to basics in an uncertain environment

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the ECB Forum on Central Banking.

Over the past 15 years, the euro area faced an environment of extraordinary pressures that called for unconventional responses.

The sovereign debt crisis brought us towards the effective lower bound. The pandemic collapsed demand further. We responded with asset purchases and refinancing operations to support the economy, and new instruments to address fragmentation.

Our toolbox expanded in other ways too: forward guidance with lift-off criteria, sequencing commitments, links between different policy instruments.

When the environment reversed and Russia cut off our access to natural gas, we responded with a conventional instrument used in unconventional ways: the fastest tightening cycle in our history, raising rates in increments we had never used before.

But in today’s environment, monetary policy now finds itself in a different position.

We no longer need to reach for unconventional instruments. While we have them at hand, we can now focus on stabilising inflation with policy rates as our primary tool.

We no longer need to act with the same force. We can make measured adjustments to rates, calibrated to

Fuente original: Banco Central Europeo (https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/key/date/2026/html/ecb.sp260629~cb5a2e2168.en.html)