ECB President Lagarde (Q&A): not taking a view onto the direction of policy at future meetings (asked if anyone had talked about moving into restrictive territory).

The notable detail is the question that prompted it, whether any Governing Council members discussed moving policy into restrictive territory; past ECB cycles have shown that once the restrictive-territory framing enters the Q&A, the hawks on the Council have usually raised the possibility internally, even where the President declines to confirm it. The transmission is through the short end of the EGB curve and the two-year segment of EONIA/OIS expectations, where the absence of directional guidance typically steepens the distribution of outcomes around the next meeting rather than shifting the median. Lagarde's prior form is to give away less in press Q&A than the hawks and doves subsequently do in their own speeches, so the follow-on that has mattered in comparable episodes is the run of individual Council member commentary in the days after, plus the account of the meeting when published. Elevated uncertainty as the stated rationale also tends to raise the beta of the next inflation and wage prints to any repricing.