Interview with Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, conducted by Marie-Pierre Gröndahl on 2 October 2023

8 October 2023

The ECB raised its key interest rates for the tenth consecutive time in fourteen months, bringing the rate on the deposit facility to 4%, its highest level since the launch of the euro. Coming at a time when people are concerned about the level of interest rates, was this move justified?

We first need to put the action taken by the European Central Bank into context. For several years now the world has been facing a “permacrisis”, a constant succession of serious and unprecedented crises − in terms of their scale, their impact and the speed at which they emerged. The health crisis was followed by Russia’s unjustified war in Ukraine, and then by an acceleration in inflation. All this against the backdrop of the energy crisis, with a number of EU countries experiencing difficulties in some interest rate-sensitive sectors, including real estate. The…