FRANKFURT (Reuters) - It is not clear yet whether the European Central Bank will take fresh policy action at its upcoming June meeting, ECB Governing Council member Jens Weidmann has said.
The ECB's loose monetary policy stance was appropriate to support the recovery, but its risks and side effects should be kept in mind, Weidmann told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, according to advance excerpts of an interview due to appear in Thursday's edition.
"The interest rate policy is the core of our monetary policy instruments. A central banker's attention would certainly focus first on this, if in the end it became necessary to act," Weidmann was quoted as saying. "But so far it is not clear whether we will have to act at all."
ECB President Mario Draghi said after the May meeting that the Governing Council was "comfortable with acting next time" - its June 5 policy meeting - but wanted to see updated economic projections from the bank's staff first.
(Reporting by Eva Taylor; Editing by Kevin Liffey)