Italy warns of 'damage' from ECB interest rates hikes

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday criticized the European Central Bank's hiking of interest rates to fight inflation, warning "the cure risks proving more damaging than the disease".

"The ECB's simplistic recipe of raising interest rates does not appear to many to be the right way forward," she said in a speech to parliament ahead of an EU summit later this week.

"In our countries, the general rise in prices is not due to an economy that is growing too fast", she said, but other factors, "first and foremost the energy crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine".

Meloni was reacting to ECB President Christine Lagarde's warning Tuesday that the bank would "continue to increase rates in July" unless there was "a material change to the outlook".

The central bank has hiked rates at the fastest pace ever over the past year in a bid to cool inflation after Russia's war in Ukraine sent energy and food prices surging.

While sky-high energy prices that drove inflation up last year have come down, ECB officials are now concerned about the impact of rising wages as workers demand higher salaries to cover rising costs, and the labor market remains tight.

Falling energy costs helped eurozone inflation slow to 6.1 percent in May year-on-year, down from a peak of 10.6 percent in October.

Nevertheless, it remains three times above the ECB's two-percent target.

 

AFP