“Unless there is a surprise, we should decide on a first reduction at our next meeting on June 6,” declared François Villeroy de Galhau, who sits on the ECB Governing Council. Inflation is getting closer to the ECB's medium-term target of 2%.
In France, the consumer price index increased by 2.3% year-on-year last month according to INSEE, a clear slowdown compared to February. “The weight of debt interest that we have to pay every year (...) will increase by almost 50 billion between 2020 and 2027," says the governor of the Bank of France. The European Central Bank (ECB) prepared the ground on Thursday for a first cut from June, the governor said in an interview to be published on Sunday in the JDD newspaper. The governor also returned to the weight of the French debt, while the government seeks to make savings to limit the public deficit, now expected at 5.1% of GDP for 2024.