Boris Vujčić: Interview with Reuters

Interview with Boris Vujčić, Vice-President of the ECB, conducted by Francesco Canepa on 16 September 2026

We are speaking less than a week after the ECB’s latest projections were published, and energy prices have already moved well above the baseline. How does this affect your outlook for inflation and growth?

Energy prices have continued to increase, and that was already evident during the Governing Council meeting compared with the cut-off date for the projections. This is also reflected in financial markets: the pricing of the interest rate path is being driven mainly by rising energy prices. In the absence of forward guidance, energy prices have become a focal point for market expectations regarding inflation, the rate path and the terminal rate.

There is a notable change compared with June and the pre-summer period. The expectation now is that energy prices will stay elevated for longer, whereas previously the baseline expectation was that tensions in the Middle East would ease and energy prices would adjust downwards. There remains a great deal of uncertainty, driven predominantly by geopolitics. We will see what happens and react based on incoming data, meeting by meeting.

Do you believe financial markets have become too fixated on energy prices in pricing future rate hikes?

We have made it clear that we do not provide forward guidance and that we act on a meeting-by-meeting basis. What I want to emphasise is that we do not look solely at energy prices, but at a much broader set of data and criteria when making monetary policy decisions. It would not be advisable to focus exclusively on energy prices, however important they are.

Markets are pricing in several rate hikes over the next 12 months. Do you think that is justified?