Eamon Quinn: ECB faces credibility test as it tries to tame inflation with interest rate hikes

Critics question the ECB's strategy as it signals it may approve further rate rises when it next meets on June 15

ECB president Christine Lagarde. Eamon Quinn writes that the ECB 'gets remarkably little scrutiny over the way it is going about its job fighting the current inflation crisis'. Picture: Kai Pfaffenbach/AP

For an organisation that played a leading role in the mismanagement of the last debt crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) gets remarkably little scrutiny over the way it is going about its job fighting the current inflation crisis.

The cost-of-living crisis bearing down on European households and businesses has been marked by the once unthinkable return of 1970s-style inflation, although the price shocks unleashed when Vladimir Putin, president of energy-rich Russia,  invaded food-rich exporter Ukraine were not of the ECB’s making.