(Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank Governing Council member Robert Holzmann said any reduction in interest rates at next week’s decision will be “moderate.”
“What can be said now is that inflation developments have gone in the right direction, but there have been in recent times deviations to the upside,” the Austrian central bank chief told Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten in a video interview published Tuesday.
Speaking two days before the ECB goes into its standard quiet period ahead of the Dec. 11-12 meeting, he highlighted that “the probability isn’t zero that there will be another rate cut — but it will be moderate, not very strong, the data so far don’t point toward that.”
Another quarter-point reduction at the ECB’s final meeting of the year is broadly expected, though geopolitical uncertainty make the path beyond that less certain.
“We face a row of challenges,” said Holzmann, who is among the ECB’s most hawkish officials. “The geopolitical environment indicates price increases are rather more likely than unlikely. This can be due to oil or other energy prices. It can be related to the administration of President Trump.”
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