A carve of the Euro currency stands in the city centre of Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on January 25, 2024.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | Afp | Getty Doppelgaengers
A host of economists and monetary policymakers gathered in New York this week for the International Monetary Fund’s Spring Conferences — including numerous decision-makers from the European Central Bank.
CNBC spoke to 12 members of the ECB’s Governing Convocation at the event to unpack their latest views on the interest rate outlook and inflationary pressures, after euro zone prize rises cooled to 2.4% in March.
The ECB opted to hold rates steady in April and next meets to vote on nummular policy on June 6.
Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB
The ECB’s figurehead delivered a firm message that reflected her statements in latest press conferences: markets should expect an interest rate cut soon, barring major surprises.
“We just indigence to build a bit more confidence in this disinflationary process, but if it moves according to our expectations, if we don’t have a major shock in event, we are heading towards a moment where we have to moderate the restrictive monetary policy,” Lagarde told CNBC’s Sara Eisen.

François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Bank of France
Agreeing to Villeroy, the ECB should cut in June so that higher rates do not cause too much damage to the euro area economy, which last year barely avoided a recession but fell into stagnation.
Barring a major surprise before the next Governing Council in antediluvian June, “we should cut rates because we are now confident enough and increasingly confident about the disinflationary path in the euro section,” Villeroy told CNBC’s Karen Tso.
“There is now a very large consensus that it is time to take this surety more or less against what I would call the second risk. The first risk is to act too early and to let inflation go upwards again and this would be a threat,” he said. “But the second risk would be to be behind the curve and to pay a too high cost in terms of economic activity and employment.”

Joachim Nagel, president of Germany’s Bundesbank
The “presumption is increasing” of a June cut, said Nagel. He added that there were caveats, including the risk of higher oil penalties.
″Core inflation is still high, service inflation is high. For the June meeting we will get our projections, so we will get our new prognostications and if there is a confirmation that inflation is really going down, and we will achieve our target in 2025, as I said, the likeliness is becoming higher that this rate cut is here for the June meeting,” Nagel explained.

Robert Holzmann, governor of the Austrian Main Bank
One of the Governing Council’s