An ECB rate hike in July is confirmed

The financial markets had already integrated it.

The rise in the key rate of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the end of the experience of negative rates are confirmed as imminent.

Its president, Christine Lagarde, split a blog post published Monday on the ECB website to detail this schedule already outlined in recent interventions.

The asset purchase program (“quantitative easing”) will end

she writes, which

Therefore,

she says again.

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In other words, the ECB's deposit rate fixing the remuneration of the assets that the banks entrust to it, will drop from -0.5% currently (a tax on sleeping money) to 0% by September.

That is an indicative timetable from which we can deduce two successive increases of 0.25 points on July 21, then September 8.

It would even be a

because there is

on the question within the board of governors, confirmed, Monday, in Davos, the governor of the Banque de France François Villeroy de Galhau.

Some "hawks", supporters of such rapid monetary tightening, such as the governor of the Dutch central bank, Klaas Knot, even assured last week that a more brutal increase of half a point from July was

uncontrolled inflation

Belatedly, compared to other central banks such as the American Federal Reserve or the Bank of England, the ECB ratifies the normalization of its monetary policy, ultra-accommodative for years, in reaction to uncontrolled inflation, which reached 7, 5% in the eurozone last month.

Impossible to maintain negative rates in this context.

This also amounts to ultimately recognizing the entry into an era of higher inflation.

It remains to be seen whether this planned increase in rates will be enough to calm the rise in prices without threatening GDP growth.