These, they noted, could make inflation more volatile, justifying a more flexible monetary policy strategy.

These structural changes point to further deviations from the two percent inflation target set by the ECB, so the eurozone institution will use tools flexibly in the face of new shocks.

This appeared in a statement that also points to the ECB’s initial monetary strategy, adopted in 1998 and revised in 2003.

That strategy was last revised in 2021 with the introduction of a medium-term inflation target of two percent.

Faced with a rapidly changing global environment, the institution did not want to wait that long again to readjust it.

According to its conclusions, all monetary policy instruments available to the guardians of the euro will remain in its toolbox, they said.

The paper says the ECB is emerging from a turbulent period, in which the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine caused inflation to spike.

abo/jav/mem/rfc