ECB’s Makhlouf: Every Meeting Could Bring a Rate Hike, October Not Ruled Out

The signal here is optionality, not direction: a Governing Council member explicitly keeping a near-term hike on the table while simultaneously playing down wage-driven inflation is a deliberately two-sided stance. For rate-sensitive sectors, including crypto and tokenized real assets that trade against the euro-area policy path, the practical effect is that the October meeting carries genuine event risk rather than being a placeholder. Whether the wage data Makhlouf cites stay benign — and whether other Council members echo his framing — is the open question.