FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Euro zone inflation will take longer to rise as political uncertainty is weighing on growth and the European Central Bank underestimated slack in the labour market, ECB board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger said in a newspaper interview.
“The number of people who lost their jobs in the crisis but never registered themselves as unemployed has been underestimated,” Austrian newspaper Der Standard on Monday quoted Lautenschlaeger as saying.
Repeating the ECB standard line on uncertainty, she added that the threat of protectionism and Brexit are also weighing on sentiment and thus on growth and inflation.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Richard Borsuk)