ECB has no target date for cutting interest rates, De Guindos says

The European Central Bank has no target date for cutting interest rates and expectations for a move next June are just market betting that may easily prove incorrect, ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos said on Friday.

“Inflation is going to continue to fall, both headline and core inflation. The markets are discounting, and the markets can also be wrong, they are based on a series of hypotheses that sometimes do not come true, that we will start to lower rates in June ’24. It is a bet, it may be right and it may not be right,” De Guindos told radio station Cadena Cope.

“It will depend on a lot of factors, it will depend on the data,” he said.

The ECB raised its main interest rate on Thursday to a record high 4% and signalled its latest hike was likely to be the last as the euro zone’s economy slows after a moving to bring inflation lower over more than a year.

“What I am saying is that with this latest increase that we carried out yesterday, if the level of interest rates is maintained over time, we believe that it may be sufficient for inflation to effectively converge towards our objective of 2 percent,” he added.