Europe is finally experiencing an economic rebound after being hard hit for more than a year and a half by the Coronavirus crisis.
The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, estimated Thursday that economic activity in the euro area should "exceed its pre-pandemic level" by the end of the year, with a growth forecast for 2021 raised to 5%.
The ECB has also raised its inflation forecasts for 2021, 2022 and 2023, with price increases of 2.2% this year, more than the 1.9% expected so far.
This rate should reach 1.7% in 2022 and 1.5% in 2023. This surge would be "largely temporary", said Christine Lagarde during her press conference after the meeting of the Board of Governors.
Slowdown in debt redemptions
Given this improvement in the economy and the rise in prices in the euro zone, the ECB announced a “moderate” slowdown in its massive debt redemptions over the last three months of the year.
These redemptions, carried out since 2020 as part of the pandemic emergency plan (PEPP), will be recalibrated to continue to guarantee good financing conditions, explained Christine Lagarde, specifying that the discussion on the future of monetary support will be conducted " in December ".
The European Central Bank has also kept the main interest rate at zero, while banks will be levied 0.50% on deposits they place with the central bank instead of lending them to their customers.
ECB experts, on the other hand, slightly lowered their growth forecast for the euro area from 4.7% to 4.6% in 2022 and left their expectations for 2023 unchanged at 2.1%. Christine Lagarde also explained that the rebound phase of the economy "is more and more advanced", but the Delta variant "could delay the full opening".
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Debt
EU
Growth
Bce
Economy
Inflation
Christine Lagarde
Eurozone