ECB’s Lagarde says bank has no preset policy stance amid Middle East tensions in World Economy News 07/03/2026 European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Thursday that the bank will maintain a flexible approach to monetary policy as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East continue to unfold. Speaking at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy, Lagarde emphasized that the ECB will make decisions on a “meeting-by-meeting” basis rather than following a predetermined path. “We will decide our monetary policy meeting by meeting based on data, we have no pre-set stance,” Lagarde said during a question and answer session. The ECB will base its decisions “in view of all the data that we can harness, and that we can analyse, and that we can scrutinize with sufficient confidence,” she added. Lagarde noted that combining the data-driven approach with the absence of a preset pace for monetary policy “places the ECB and the euro system in a good position to monitor very carefully and to try to understand what the consequences of the current shocks will be in the future.” The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has expanded to include other Gulf countries, raising concerns about potential impacts on inflation and euro zone growth through higher energy costs and supply chain disruptions. “We will monitor global developments very carefully and assess impact of current shocks for the future,” Lagarde said. Source: Investing.com 2026-03-07 hellenicshippingnews... window.___gcfg = {lang: 'en-US'}; (function(w, d, s) { function go(){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], load = function(url, id) { if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.src = url; js.id = id; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }; load('//connect.facebook.net/en/all.js#xfbml=1', 'fbjssdk'); load('https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js', 'gplus1js'); load('//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js', 'tweetjs'); } if (w.addEventListener) { w.addEventListener("load", go, false); } else if (w.attachEvent) { w.attachEvent("onload",go); } }(window, document, 'script')); tweet Share