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Dinner speech by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Money Marketeers of New York University
New York, 21 September 2023
Introduction
In my remarks this evening, I will assess the economic and inflation outlook in the euro area and explain last week’s monetary policy decision taken by the Governing Council of the ECB.
Before I turn to the most recent developments, let me start by recalling how we got to where we are today.[1] The 2021-2022 inflation surge in Europe was driven predominantly by an extraordinary combination of shocks. The pandemic generated a staggered sequence of sectoral supply-demand mismatches. Especially in 2021, the global rotation of spending from services towards goods — at a time when supply remained hampered by pandemic-related lockdowns — resulted in severe supply chain bottlenecks and fostered exceptional pricing power for producers of in-demand products. In Europe, after alternating waves of lockdowns and temporary…