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After the ECB’s June Rate Hike: How the Energy Shock Is Rewriting the 2026 Interest-Rate Path

On June 11, 2026, the European Central Bank became the first major central bank in the world to raise interest rates directly because of the war in Iran, lifting its benchmark rate from 2% to 2.25%. The move itself was widely expected—Reuters described it in its report that day as a “long-signaled move”—but the context was unusual: this was not a conventional cycle of monetary tightening, but an energy-price shock triggered by geopolitical conflict, forcing the euro area to make difficult trade-offs between inflation and growth. Subsequent developments showed that the June rate hike was only the beginning, not the end. Sources: reuters.com; apnews.com