The head of the European Central Bank said Monday that the economic outlook “is darkening” and she expects business activity to “slow substantially” in the coming months as high energy and food prices pushed up by the war in Ukraine sap consumer spending power.
ECB President Christine Lagarde hedged her remarks to the European Parliament regarding whether the eurozone would sink into recession, saying the bank's baseline scenario was subdued economic growth. But she appeared to qualify that by saying some assumptions in that outlook — such as the remaining supply of Russian natural gas — have been “overridden by events.”
