Vaccine uncertainty is also weighing on the euro. Europe is heavily dependent on the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has already been met with scepticism after it was temporarily suspended last month.
The ECB will release the minutes of their latest meeting today, which will be watched by the markets closely.
Ahead of the meeting minutes, ECB official Klaas Knot instilled some confidence into prospects for Europe’s economic recovery yesterday. He said that if the economy recovers as expected, then the ECB can faze out their measures to help the economy recover from the pandemic.
He said, “If the economy develops according to our baseline, we will see better inflation and growth from the second half onwards. In that case, it would be equally clear to me that from the third quarter onwards we can begin to gradually phase out pandemic emergency purchases and end them as foreseen in March 2022.”
