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

Ljubljana, 17 October 2024

Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference. I would like to thank Governor Vasle for his kind hospitality and express our special gratitude to his staff for the excellent organisation of today’s meeting of the Governing Council.

The Governing Council today decided to lower the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points. In particular, the decision to lower the deposit facility rate – the rate through which we steer the monetary policy stance – is based on our updated assessment of the inflation outlook, the dynamics of underlying inflation and the strength of monetary policy transmission. The incoming information on inflation shows that the disinflationary process is well on track. The inflation outlook is also affected by recent downside surprises in indicators of economic activity. Meanwhile, financing conditions remain…