FRANKFURT (Reuters) – European Central Bank policymakers Pierre Wunsch said on Friday he was uncomfortable with the ECB’s new guidance, which has been taken as a commitment not to raise interest rates for five or six years.
“My dissent shouldn’t be dramatised,” Wunsch, the Belgian central bank governor, said in a televised interview with CNBC.
“I guess it boils down to the kind of commitment you can take over a possibly long period of time – we’re maybe talking 5 or 6 years, if we look at market expectations.”
He added he would have wanted “an escape clause” allowing the ECB to raise rates if faced by risks such as fiscal dominance – that is the central bank setting its own policy to suit a government’s financing needs.
(Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi)
