ECB's Moulin (France) says French economy is holding up in face of energy shock; but uncertainty gauge is at it's highest since April

Comments from the French central bank wing of the ECB usually transmit first through the OAT-Bund spread and French credit, with EUR front-end rates moving only if the remarks are read as shifting the wider Governing Council reaction function rather than describing a national snapshot. The key distinction is between activity resilience and uncertainty: holding the Q3 growth estimate at 0.1% points to stagnation rather than contraction, while the highest uncertainty reading since the April reference typically feeds through investment, hiring and inventory behaviour before it shows up in GDP. In comparable energy-shock episodes, officials have tended to acknowledge near-term resilience while keeping policy conditional, because the inflation impulse from energy can argue one way for headline risk and the confidence hit can argue the other for demand. The next tells are whether other ECB speakers echo the same resilience-versus-uncertainty framing, and whether French survey data, PMIs and the Q3 flash validate the 0.1% holding pattern. The energy leg remains the swing variable through freight, insurance and input costs, with the policy read dependent on whether softness is treated as demand weakness or supply-driven price pressure.