a European Central Bank decision to leave interest rates unchanged<\/a>.<\/p>\nPolicymakers in Frankfurt were considering an increase as soaring oil prices from the Iran war push inflation in the eurozone higher.<\/p>\n
A combination of slow growth and high inflation, or “stagflation,”\u00a0threatens to become a headache for the ECB, which left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 2% on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“The longer the war continues and the longer energy prices remain high, the stronger is the likely impact on broader inflation and the economy,” ECB policymakers said.<\/p>\n
Most analysts agreed that it was too early to raise interest rates, with an increase likely to stifle already floundering growth.<\/p>\n
The CEO of the German Insurance Association (GDV), J\u00f6rg Asmussen, said it was understandable that the ECB had not acted.<\/p>\n
“Given the uncertain duration of the Iran war and the depth of its economic impact, the ECB, like all central banks, is currently navigating in the fog,” Asmussen said.<\/p>\n
Lena Drager, a research director at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, agreed but said the bank needed to be ready to swiftly raise interest rates if necessary.<\/p>\n
“A preventive interest rate hike would be wrong now. It would further burden the already weak economy without being able to directly combat the energy price shock. The right answer is: wait and see, but with a clear response function.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"04\/30\/2026April 30, 2026German experts welcome ECB decision to leave interest rates unchanged The decision was announced from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-425361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}