European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane was speaking at a Bloomberg(gated) New Economy Gateway Europe conference outside Dublin, in an interview:

• “As of now, two weeks away, I think the baseline is that we should indeed increase interest rates in May,”
• “Exactly what we do — I’m going to wait until we have that data before deciding.”
• “We are now in an intense phase of data dependence. I’m very much in wait-and-see mode.”

The next European Central Bank monetary-policy meeting is on May 3-4.

As for the path after May, Lane:

“Let’s focus on what we do now in the May meeting, and then essentially the dominant driver of what we do in June is what the data tell us between now and June.”

Asked about how long the ECB’s 3% deposit rate will remain at its peak

• "It would be appropriate to keep rates at the plateau level for a while before returning back to normal”

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.

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