ECB Bulletin

The ECB Economic Bulletin is the European Central Bank's standing analytical review of euro-area and global economic, financial and monetary developments. It started with Issue 1/2015 and replaced the Monthly Bulletin, which ran from January 1999 to December 2014. It appears 8 times a year on a six-week cycle.

It combines Eurostat and ECB data up to each issue's cut-off with staff projections for inflation, growth, public finances and external trade. It surveys no one and reports no single number. It is not a scored index, the rate decision or the policy accounts, and it covers the euro area, not the EU as a whole.

The Bulletin is published 8 times a year, normally 2 weeks after each monetary-policy meeting, usually on a Thursday with no fixed time of day. Each issue freezes statistics at a stated cut-off days before publication, while projection rounds use a separate earlier data cut-off.

March, June, September and December issues add staff forecasts for inflation, growth, public finances and external trade, plus short Boxes and longer research Articles. Each release brings a full-issue PDF plus a statistical annex. Later issues update prior figures, with no stated revision rule, and holidays can delay year-end timing.

Readers watch 6 standing sections rather than any scored index, with forecasts added in 4 issues.

• Overview: the Governing Council decision and its economic rationale, in a front analytical summary.
• External environment: global activity, trade, foreign demand and global prices.
• Economic activity: euro-area output, demand components and the labour market.
• Prices and costs: HICP headline and components such as energy, food, goods and services. HICP excluding energy and food, wages and producer prices complete the picture.
• Financial market developments, financing conditions and credit developments: interest rates, bonds, stocks and exchange rates. Bank lending rates, loan volumes, monetary aggregates, liquidity and policy operations.
• Fiscal developments, Boxes, Articles and Statistics: budget balances, fiscal stance and draft budgetary plans. Short Boxes, longer Articles and a statistical annex.

Issue 8/2022 followed the 15 December 2022 meeting and appeared online on 12 January 2023, after the holidays stretched the usual two-week lag. The Council raised the 3 key rates by 50 basis points. The main refinancing operations, marginal lending facility and deposit facility rates reached 2.50%, 2.75% and 2.00% from 21 December 2022, with steady further rises signalled.

Headline HICP fell to 10.0% in November 2022 from 10.6% in October 2022 on lower energy inflation. Food inflation hit 13.6% while HICP excluding energy and food rose from 3.9% toward 4.2%. Staff forecasts for the four years from 2022 put inflation at 8.4%, 6.3%, 3.4% and 2.3%. Growth forecasts were 3.4%, 0.5%, 1.9% and 1.8%, with any downturn short-lived and shallow.

1. Statistical freeze: Each issue locks incoming data at its stated cut-off, so later data wait for the next issue.
2. Staff projections: In March, June, September and December rounds, staff forecasts for inflation, growth, budgets and trade feed the analysis without binding future decisions.
3. Policy framing: The Bulletin sets data and forecasts around the Governing Council decision. For example, asset purchase holdings fall by €15 billion a month on average from March 2023 to the end of the second quarter of 2023.