European Central Bank policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau, who is also governor of the French central bank, attends the Paris Europlace International Financial Forum in Tokyo, Japan, November 19, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai
July 7, 2019
AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Reuters) – The European Central Bank (ECB) will decide its next policy moves based on incoming economic data and not financial market swings, ECB policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said in an interview released on Monday.
Villeroy, who is also the French central bank governor, told CNBC television that there should be no doubt about the ECB’s determination to act and its capacity to do so if it proved necessary.
“We look at the markets but we are not market dependent. We are data dependent,” Villeroy said in the interview on the sidelines of an economics conference in southern France.
“So let us wait for our next governing councils – and there are several to come – to assess the data and then to decide,” he added.
Bond yields have plunged recently in the face of weak economic data, putting pressure on central banks to carry out drastic new monetary stimulus to keep inflation expectations from collapsing.
Villeroy said that uncertainty created by trade tensions were the number one threat to the global economy, which central banks could do little to fix.
“It’s up to political leaders to reduce these uncertainties, which are sometimes self created. We cannot compensate for trade tensions,” Villeroy said.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
