PRESS CONFERENCE

Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB,
Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB

Sintra, 30 June 2025

Good afternoon, ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane and I welcome you to this press conference, on the occasion of the conclusion of the 2025 assessment of our monetary policy strategy.

The Governing Council recently agreed on an updated monetary policy strategy statement. You can find this statement on our website, together with an explanatory overview note and the two occasional papers presenting the underlying analyses.

I will start by putting this strategy assessment into the broader context. Philip Lane will then go through the updated strategy statement and explain what has changed and why, as well as what has remained unchanged.

Following the strategy review we carried out in 2020-21, the Governing Council committed to “assess periodically the appropriateness of its monetary policy strategy, with the next assessment expected in 2025”. Such regular assessments ensure that our framework, toolkit and approach remain fit for purpose in a changing world.

And the world has changed significantly over the last four years. Some of the issues we were most concerned about back in 2021 – including inflation being too low for too long – have taken a rather different turn.

Not only did we see inflation surge, but some fundamental structural features of our economy and the inflation environment are changing: geopolitics, digitalisation, the increasing use of artificial intelligence, demographics, the threat to environmental sustainability and the evolution of the international financial system.

All of those suggest that the environment in which we operate will remain highly uncertain and potentially more volatile. This will make it more challenging to conduct our monetary policy and fulfil our mandate to keep prices stable.

During the strategy assessment, we asked: what do these changes mean for the way we assess the economy, conduct our policy, use our toolkit, take our decisions and communicate them? In seeking to answer this question, our mindset was forward-looking.

On the whole, we concluded that our monetary policy strategy remains well suited to addressing the challenges that lie ahead.

But our strategy also needs to be updated and adjusted in certain areas, so that the ECB can remain fit for purpose in the years to come. The next assessment is expected in 2030.

With our updated strategy statement, we are taking a comprehensive perspective on the challenges facing our monetary policy, so that the ECB can remain an anchor of stability in this more uncertain world.

This is our core message to the euro area citizens we serve: the new environment gives many reasons to worry, but one thing they do not need to worry about is our commitment to price stability.

The ECB is committed to its mandate and will keep itself and its tools updated to be able to respond to new challenges.

Let me conclude by thanking, on behalf of the Governing Council, all the colleagues across the Eurosystem who have contributed to this assessment in a great team effort.

I now hand over to our Chief Economist Philip Lane and, following his remarks, we will be ready to take your questions.