Interview with Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, conducted by Guillaume Benoit and Christophe Jakubyszyn on 24 June 2026

2 July 2026

On 11 June, the ECB raised its key interest rates. Do you still think that was the right decision, given that just ten days later Iran and the United States agreed a 60-day ceasefire?

We are confident that we made the right choice. As early as April, a large majority of Governing Council members were already prepared to take a decision. But at that point we still didn’t have all the necessary information.

All the data we have received since then have confirmed our analysis. We are facing an external supply shock that is currently spreading to the rest of the economy and whose indirect effects we can already see. We are also keeping a close eye on the risk of second-round effects, even though they have not yet materialised.

What form are these tensions taking?

Inflation excluding energy and food is accelerating, rising from 2.2% to 2.5%. This is…