The ECB also announced the end of its net bond purchases program on 1 July.
Unwilling to meet financial market expectations, the European Central Bank decided to raise interest rates by 25 basis points from next July, at its monetary policy meeting today, with the goal of too long to be one: curbing ever-accelerating inflation.
ECB officials had long ago announced both the end of bond markets and interest rate hikes, with the financial markets anticipating that the first interest rate hike would come next month.
In its announcement, the ECB also specifies the official end of bond markets (the so-called quantitative easing or QE) on 1 July, thus retaining previous decisions in full.
It is recalled that the head of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, in the regular press conference after the last meeting, had stated that the interest rate increase will come shortly after the end of the QE cycle, which finally ends on July 1.
At present, as mentioned in the announcement, the interest rates remain unchanged as they are: at -0.50% the interest rate for the acceptance of deposits, at 0 the interest rate for the main refinancing and at 0.25% for the facility for marginal financing.
However, the Governing Council of the ECB did not stop only at the next meeting, as it signaled a new increase in interest rates next September. But in this case the policymakers did not want to define the range of growth, as they say, “the range will depend on the medium-term outlook for inflation.
