In the accounts of the ECB’s October 27-28 meeting, it’s noted, “since the monetary policy space was constrained by the effective lower bound on interest rates, the increase in the inflation rate was seen as an opportunity to re-anchor inflation expectations solidly at the Governing Council’s 2% target over the medium term.”

Also, “a continued accommodative monetary policy stance would also be in line with the Governing Council’s new monetary policy strategy, which called for policy to be persistent when interest rates were at the lower bound and explicitly allowed for inflation to moderately exceed the target for a transitory period”.

Meanwhile, “some of the upside risks to the September 2021 staff projections had materialised and that the recent uptick in inflation was expected to be more persistent than previously anticipated.”