ECB's Schnabel says high costs passed through to consumers more quickly when economy resilient

Schnabel has consistently sat at the hawkish end of the Governing Council, so remarks of this kind are read less as new information about her own stance and more as a test of whether the restrictive-but-patient framing is gaining ground at the centre of the committee. The substance here cuts both ways: the observation that firms pass costs through faster in a resilient economy is a classic argument against premature easing, while the acknowledgment that the global yield rise may itself be doing some of the tightening work is the standard hawk's case for holding rather than hiking further. The claim that credit dynamics show conditions are not yet restrictive is the tell worth tracking, since that framing has historically been used to argue that policy can stay at plateau for longer without damage, which supports the longer-for-longer leg of the curve rather than the timing of any first cut. The distinction that matters for pricing is between the pace of cuts and the terminal rate: gradual-return language addresses sequencing at the front end, anchored-expectations language addresses how much tolerance there is for above-target prints along the way. The follow-ons are whether other Council members echo the not-yet-restrictive line and how the remarks sit against the next wage and negotiated-pay data, which have been the ECB's own stated trigger variables. As commentary from a known hawk rather than a decision, the signal is directional at the margin.