Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference.
The Governing Council today decided to keep the three key ECB interest rates unchanged. While
inflation has dropped in recent months, it is likely to pick up again temporarily in the near term.
According to the latest Eurosystem staff projections for the euro area, inflation is expected to decline
gradually over the course of next year, before approaching our two per cent target in 2025. Overall,
staff expect headline inflation to average 5.4 per cent in 2023, 2.7 per cent in 2024, 2.1 per cent in
2025 and 1.9 per cent in 2026. Compared with the September staff projections, this amounts to a
downward revision for 2023 and especially for 2024.
