“Monetary policy cannot undo this price increase”

The first four years of her term in office are over. In January 2020, the German economist Isabel Schnabel, 52, joined the board of directors of the European Central Bank. The ECB was soon confronted with a problem that the monetary authorities had never experienced before: inflation rose massively and the central bank raised key interest rates at a record pace. Inflation rates are now falling. Schnabel doesn’t want to talk about whether and when the ECB will lower interest rates. She talks about the side effects of key interest rates, the difficulty of combating inflation in times of war and climate change and why she defends the inflation target of exactly 2.0 percent.