Interview with Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB, conducted by Amanda Mars on 30 April 2026

3 May 2026

The ECB has had to take more action than was expected when you became Vice-President in 2018. Would you say that you came in as a hawk [with a more orthodox approach] and have gradually softened your stance? And was that out of conviction or owing to the severity of events?

I think I’ve been in the middle. In Bloomberg’s ranking of hawks and doves [more inclined to looser policy], for example, I’m in the middle. Yes, I was more of a hawk before, in 2022, I was one of the first to make the case that we would need to raise rates and that inflation was more persistent than we had been saying. After peaking at 10%, inflation then fell back to 2%. Now, at the end of my time here, I would say that I lean more towards prudence.

What does that mean exactly?

It means recognising that the current situation is very different from 2021 or 2022. Back then, in addition to the shock…