Interview with Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB, conducted by Domenico Conti

29 October 2024

At the latest press conference, President Lagarde spoke of a series of economic indicators pointing lower and of downside risks to growth. The Survey of Professional Forecasters published by the ECB foresees inflation of 1.9% in 2025, compared with 2.2% in the projections by ECB experts. In this context, will the Governing Council have the option to make back-to-back interest rate cuts, as occurred in September and October?

In short, on the current economic situation, we don’t have good news with respect to growth but we do have good news with respect to inflation.

On growth, we have revised down our projections twice – before the summer and in September. We see that the downside risks that we identified are crystallising, mainly because consumption is not recovering as expected. Even though real disposable income has increased because wages are catching up with past inflation,…