MARKET NEWS

By Mark Schroers

(Bloomberg) -- Euro-area inflation climbed above the European Central Bank’s 2% target, though officials are unlikely to be deterred from continuing to lower interest rates next month and beyond.

Consumer prices rose 2.3% from a year ago in November, up from 2% in October and matching the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. While dipping a touch, increases in services costs stayed elevated, Eurostat said Friday. For non-energy industrial goods, they advanced for a second month.

Closely watched core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, defied predictions that it would also edge higher, holding instead at 2.7%.

ECB officials have telegraphed a fourth quarter-point rate reduction of 2024 at their final policy meeting of the year in less than two weeks. While more moves will follow, the timing is clouded by stubborn pockets of inflation, and factors such as the Federal Reserve’s own monetary-easing plans following Donald Trump’s re-election.

The ECB’s more dovish policymakers, such as Greece’s Yannis Stournaras and Portugal’s Mario Centeno, worry that Europe’s weakening economy risks inflation undershooting the 2% goal. They’ve intensified calls to rapidly bring the deposit rate, currently at 3.25%, to 2% — a level seen by them as neutral, so neither restricting nor stimulating growth.

France’s Francois Villeroy de Galhau even said Thursday that the ECB may need to take borrowing costs into expansionary territory to promote growth, echoing recent comments by his Italian counterpart Fabio Panetta.

Investors appear to share similar concerns: A key market gauge of medium-term inflation expectations dipped below 2% this week for the first time since 2022.

Hawks like Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel, however, are more cautious — warning against rushing further rate cuts due to sticky services-sector inflation, elevated wage increases and huge geopolitical uncertainties.

Euro-zone consumers, too, saw slightly higher inflation in a year’s time, according to the ECB’s October expectations survey, published earlier Friday. 

The Eurostat data showed that services inflation inched lower, to 3.9% from 4%, but remains far too high for many Governing Council members. 

Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel told Bloomberg this week that borrowing costs are already close to neutral and it doesn’t currently seem appropriate to go lower to stimulate the economy.

New ECB projections in December for growth and prices will be key to determining how aggressively policy is loosened. While some officials reckon 2% inflation will be reached already in early 2025, recent European Commission forecasts that it will take longer.

Trump’s return adds to the uncertainty. While most ECB policymakers agree that trade tariffs would dent growth in Europe, the effect on prices is less clear. President Christine Lagarde said this week that it would be “a little net inflationary in the short term.”

--With assistance from Barbara Sladkowska, Joel Rinneby and Flavia Rotondi.