Lorraine Cooke

So it's likely the European Central Bank are meeting this month.

Now, they have said that they are holding fire.

At the end of April, they wanted to just hold things to see what was going to happen over the next number of weeks between inflation.

So due to the energy crisis, inflation has risen.

The cost of everything has gone up.

And in that regard, what has happened now is the European Central Bank has to monitor that to see do they need to

Restrict spending and tighten monetary policy.

That's what's forecasted.

So at the moment, if they do increase the rates, possibly the end of this month or next week, as you think they're due to meet, it could be, for example, a quarter of a percent is what's forecasted.

Inflation at the end of May was three and a half percent.

The magic number that the European Central Bank want inflation at is at two percent.

When the Ukraine-Russia invasion happened, inflation soared.

So by the end of 2023, we were at 9.5%.

So that's where we saw interest rates go up 10 times by the European Central Bank.

Now, they did pass on eight rate cuts when inflation came back down.

We're in this environment again where inflation is increasing.

But due to the geopolitical and the economic uncertainty...

And how long this will go on for, they are just monitoring it at the moment.

But it is expected that they will increase the rates.

If the banks pass on the deposit rate increase.