Tajani: “The ECB is cautious on rates”
Get back to being heard Antonio Tajani, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, on the subject of interest rates. “Exogenous inflation cannot be fought by continuing to raise interest rates, because then growth pays a price”, he explained at the two-day Feuromed event underway in Naples. “In Italy and Europe, inflation is brought down by capping the price of gas, not by capping the cost of money,” he added.
Just minutes after Thursday’s announcement of an interest rate hike of another 50 basis points, Tajani had invited Christine Lagarde and the board of the ECB to prudence in view of the next moves. Obviously, the Italian Foreign Minister reiterates the independence of the ECB’s decisions, but, “in his independence I would advise the ECB to be more cautious, as many representatives of that free institution have done because this also affects action in the Mediterranean, where companies must be put in a position to be able to compete”.
The positive signs
Tajani underlines how the ECB’s strategy for the next few months has not yet been defined and appreciates the good signals received from Lagarde’s press conference. “During the announcement of the interest rate hike by 0.50 the other day – added Tajani – there was no more talk of new decisions in this direction and therefore we are going in the direction indicated by the governor of the Bank of Italy Visco which I agree with, as well as that of the president of the Italian banking association Patuelli”.