ECB's Zigman says market bets don't determine the ECB’s next steps and there’s a lot of optimism for growth; don’t see any major second-round effects and growth is at risk if inflation isn’t tackled.

When a governing council member explicitly disavows market bets as a guide to policy, the point is to claw back optionality against positioning that has run ahead of the data, a pattern familiar from episodes where easing or tightening expectations became self-reinforcing and required verbal correction before any decision. The framing matters: stressing that growth is at risk if inflation goes untackled, and dismissing second-round effects as absent rather than impossible, places this firmly on the hawkish side of the council's internal split, where the argument is that premature accommodation is the greater risk to output, not the restraint itself. Single-member commentary of this kind historically reprices the front end only at the margin unless it reflects the committee's centre of gravity, so the tell is whether more centrist officials echo the pushback in subsequent appearances. Worth watching is the sequencing relative to the next decision: pushback of this sort has tended to cluster in the run-up to meetings where the council wants to preserve discretion over the pace or timing of the next step. As a signal it is directional on rates and the short end rather than on the level of the path.