New stretch in the final stretch of 2022. The Euribor interbank rates climbed for the seventh consecutive session in its main terms to maximums since December 2008. The 12-month index, a reference for Spanish mortgages, rose this Tuesday to 3,265%,7 basis points more than on Friday and a new maximum since December 2008. The monthly average for December now stands at 2.97% and, in the absence of three data for the end of the period, it could exceed the level of 3% this week .
The 12-month Euribor has risen close to half a percentage point since the European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates to 2.5% on December 15 and is walking steadily towards levels of 3.5% ahead of at the start of 2016 Since then it has completed a record rise of 377 basis points in just one year.
The Euribor began to rise more significantly from February 4, weeks before the start of the war in Ukraine, after the European Central Bank (ECB) admitted that inflation was not transitory, as it had indicated in the previous months and left the door open to raising the main interest rates. On July 21, ECB President Christine Lagarde announced the first official rate hike in 11 years, when she moved the monetary lever from 0% to 0.5%.
At the last monetary policy meeting, on December 15, the ECB raised official interest rates by 50 basis points, after another two consecutive 75 basis point hikes on October 27 and September 8. The central bank also said it will raise prices further at a half-point rate for some time despite the ongoing recession, giving guidance for the next two meetings.
The estimate that rates “will still have to be increased significantly at a sustained pace up to sufficiently restrictive levels” to return inflation to the 2% target in the medium term. “Over time, keeping interest rates at restrictive levels will reduce inflation by moderating demand and will also serve as a hedge against the risk of a persistent upward shift in inflation expectations,” he said in his statement.
