Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB,
Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB

Frankfurt am Main, 30 April 2026

Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference.

The Governing Council today decided to keep the three key ECB interest rates unchanged. While the incoming information has been broadly consistent with our previous assessment of the inflation outlook, the upside risks to inflation and the downside risks to growth have intensified. We are committed to setting monetary policy to ensure that inflation stabilises at our two per cent target in the medium term.

The war in the Middle East has led to a sharp increase in energy prices, pushing up inflation and weighing on economic sentiment. The implications of the war for medium-term inflation and economic activity will depend on the intensity and duration of the energy price shock and the scale of its indirect and second-round effects. The longer the war continues and the longer energy prices…