Welcome address by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the 5th WE_ARE_IN Macroeconomics and Finance Conference 2025

Frankfurt am Main, 21 October 2025

It is an honour to participate in the fifth edition of the WE_ARE_IN Macroeconomics and Finance Conference and I congratulate the organising committee for putting together an excellent programme.

Let me start this speech by outlining how the ECB makes monetary policy decisions.^[1] As expressed in our monetary policy statement:^[2]

The Governing Council is determined to ensure that inflation stabilises at its 2% target in the medium term. It will follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach to determining the appropriate monetary policy stance. In particular, the Governing Council’s interest rate decisions will be based on its assessment of the inflation outlook and the risks surrounding it, in light of the incoming economic and financial data, as well as the dynamics of underlying inflation and the…