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

Frankfurt am Main, 18 December 2025

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. Our updated assessment reconfirms that inflation should stabilise at our two per cent target in the medium term.

The new Eurosystem staff projections show headline inflation averaging 2.1 per cent in 2025, 1.9 per cent in 2026, 1.8 per cent in 2027 and 2.0 per cent in 2028. For inflation excluding energy and food, staff project an average of 2.4 per cent in 2025, 2.2 per cent in 2026, 1.9 per cent in 2027 and 2.0 per cent in 2028. Inflation has been revised up for 2026, mainly because staff now expect services inflation to decline more slowly. Economic growth is expected to be stronger than in the September projections, driven especially by domestic demand. Growth has been revised up to 1.4 per cent…