The European Central Bank must lift borrowing costs further to return inflation to its target, Governing Council member Bostjan Vasle told Slovenia’s Delo newspaper.
“Further interest-rate increases will be needed,” Vasle said in an interview published Thursday. “But they’ll be smaller than they were in the past. We’re approaching the level of rates that’s restrictive enough to bring inflation back toward 2%.”
Vasle joins several other members of the ECB’s 26-strong Governing Council in calling for more hikes that could yet persist into the fall. That would surpass the two quarter-point increases economists and investors see in June and July, concluding the most intense bout of monetary tightening of the euro era.
Vasle, who heads Slovenia’s central bank, said taming inflation won’t be possible without a coordinated approach to economic policymaking.
“Fiscal — including wage policy — and monetary policies will have to be linked to a greater extent than in the past,” he said.
