www.ecb.europa.eu
Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB,
Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB
Frankfurt am Main, 5 February 2026
Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference.
We would like to begin by congratulating Bulgaria on joining the euro area on 1 January 2026. We also warmly welcome Dimitar Radev, the Governor of Българска народна банка (Bulgarian National Bank), to the Governing Council. Membership of the euro area has almost doubled since 1999 and is testimony to the attractiveness of the single currency and the enduring benefits of European integration.
We will now report on the outcome of today’s meeting.
The Governing Council today decided to keep the three key ECB interest rates unchanged. Our updated assessment reconfirms that inflation should stabilise at our two per cent target in the medium term. The economy remains resilient in a challenging global environment. Low unemployment, solid private sector balance sheets,…