There is thus a fundamental credibility issue about the willingness of the ECB to be a lender of last resort in the government bond markets. This will continue to make the eurozone a fragile construction. As a result, the possibility of a future euro crisis cannot be excluded.

While it is too early to confirm the depth and the sustainability of this new trend towards slower globalisation, it may be happening in more domains than we are fully aware of, at least for the near term given the renewed backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war and the wider use of sanctions globally.

Euro area inflation has been rising strongly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving rise to concerns that there could be second-round effects, with higher inflation leading to higher inflation expectations, which in turn lead to higher inflation. This could result in more persistent rises...

To gauge the breadth of current inflation and prospects for inflation returning to target, we consider disaggregated measures of CPI infl ation to evaluate trends and then consider diff erent scenarios for the realisation for wages and prices.

Although there are currently four retail central bank digital currencies in circulation, no central bank has yet issued the wholesale form of a central bank digital currency. There are good reasons to do so, however, and central banks have already conducted projects in this area. A wholesale...