ECB Governing Council member Wunsch said that the central bank should be able to continue relaxing policies, but must pay attention to the growth of consumer prices.

He said on Sunday (September 15th), "In our basic scenario, if our forecast becomes reality, we should be able to further lower interest rates. However, I believe that if service sector inflation continues to rise, this process may slow down

Wunsch gave a speech three days after the European Central Bank's second interest rate cut, and President Lagarde hinted that it is more likely to cut interest rates again in December rather than at the next meeting in October.

The Belgian central bank governor said that consumer price growth "seems to be more or less under control". However, inflation in the service sector (excluding inflation in goods and energy) remains high at around 4%. So this is not easy, and if the economy starts to recover, we hope this is the case. It is very likely that inflation will remain above 2% for a longer period of time

The European Central Bank last week insisted on its inflation forecast and predicted that consumer price growth would reach a target level of 2% by the end of 2025.

Wunsch said, "The economic recovery in Europe is slowing down, and we believe we will see a recovery in 2023, but that has not yet arrived. 2024 is relatively slow and still cyclical to some extent, but increasingly structural

As Belgium, we no longer have any safety buffer to deal with future shocks or crises. We have achieved this in dealing with the pandemic and energy crisis, but with unchanged policies, the deficit tends towards 6%, and we will no longer have the ability to repeat this situation in the future

When asked about the deadline for submitting the mid-term budget plan to the EU on September 20th, he said, "This is not a matter of a week or a month. I think the quality of the negotiation content is more important than delaying it for 15 days. Europe has made it clear that without a government, we can understand that the plan came a bit late. Quality is more important, but we cannot wait for 500 days, which must be achieved before the end of this year.