ECB Being Pulled in Multiple Directions as It Prepares First Rate Rise in a Decade
FRANKFURT—European Central Bank President
Christine Lagarde
faces a three-pronged challenge this week as she steers Europe’s currency union through an increasingly hostile landscape of surging prices, slowing economic growth and political turbulence.Ms. Lagarde is expected to unveil the ECB’s first interest-rate increase in more than a decade to combat eurozone inflation that is nearing 9%, following—with some delay—other central banks, including the Federal Reserve. At the same time, she…