(Reuters) – European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said the euro zone was getting “very close” to reaching the central bank’s medium-term inflation goal, according to an interview published by the Financial Times on Monday.
Earlier in December, Lagarde had said the central bank would cut interest rates further if inflation continued to ease towards its 2% target, as curbing growth was no longer necessary.
“We’re getting very close to that stage when we can declare that we have sustainably brought inflation to our medium-term 2%,” Lagarde told the FT, urging continued vigilance on services inflation.
“You know, inflation, the latest reading we have is 2.2%,” she added. “But services is still 3.9% and not budging much. It’s been hovering around 4%.”
Lagarde said she opposed retaliation by Europe to tariff threats made by incoming U.S. President Donald Trump.
“I said that retaliation was a bad approach because I think that overall trade restrictions followed by retaliation and this tit-for-tat, conflictual way of dealing with trade is just bad for the global economy at large,” she added.
(Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Clarence Fernandez)