ECB: Weekly ECB Speak Wrap (Jan 30 – Feb 3)

The January ECB decision brought few surprises, with a 25bp cut delivered alongside unchanged guidance and reaffirmed confidence in the inflation outlook (MNI’s full review is here). Post-decision ECB-speak has similarly been unsurprising, while customary post-meeting source reports provide did not trigger any meaningful repricing in EUR rates (with other domestic and global drivers more in focus). 

• Reuters’ sources piece on Thursday evening largely re-iterated the key themes from the MNI Policy Team’s pre-January meeting reporting. MNI’s story highlighted that a 25bp cut in March is widely expected amongst policymakers, while there are divisions over the timing of a potential third cut.
• Bloomberg sources suggested the ECB may stop describing monetary policy as “restrictive” come March. Expectations around such a move may develop further following the release of an ECB staff paper on neutral rates this Friday. We expect this report to contextualise President Lagarde’s most recently cited neutral range of 1.75-2.25%, which was a little tighter than the 1.75-2.50% range provided at the December ’24 press conference.
• The week ahead sees Executive Board appearances from Chief Economist Lane (Wednesday) and Vice President de Guindos (Friday).
• In the following publication, we provide a summary of ECB-speak between January 30 and February 3: 250203 - Weekly ECB Speak Wrap.pdf