Taylor Swift performs during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, on June 28, 2024.
Charles Mcquillan/tas24 | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Tuesday that Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is not the only thing keeping inflation high in the eurozone.
Lagarde said that while services sector inflation remained persistent across the 20-nation bloc last month, which coincided with the European leg of Swift's sold-out tour, it could not be blamed on just one artist.
“It's not just Taylor Swift, you know,” Lagarde told CNBC's Sara Eisen in Sintra, Portugal. “There are others who came.”
Lagarde was responding to a question about whether Swift's tour would fuel inflation in the services sector, one of the measures the ECB is closely monitoring.
The economic impact of Swift's sold-out tour has been well documented and comes amid concerns that central banks are not out of the woods yet in their fight against inflation.
Terms like “Swiftflation” and “Swiftonomics” emerged last year after spending on services like hotels, flights and restaurants surged around her appearances. Analysts have even suggested that the impact on key UK inflation figures during her London dates could prompt the Bank of England to delay an expected rate cut in September.
However, increased consumer spending surrounding major tours by other artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, Pink and Sting, is also said to provide an economic boost.
“Services are a tricky category,” Lagarde noted, adding that “it is still not clear” whether that persistence will last.
Eurozone services inflation held steady at 4.1% in June, the European Union statistics office reported earlier on Tuesday. Core inflation, which excludes volatile energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, remained at 2.9% from the previous month, just above the 2.8% economists had forecast.
Meanwhile, headline inflation fell to 2.5% in June, down from 2.6% in May, in line with expectations of economists polled by Reuters.
Lagarde was speaking at the ECB's annual monetary policy conference, where central bankers from around the world gathered to discuss inflation prospects and future trends in interest rates.
She added that the ECB has now come “a long way” in curbing inflation, but noted that uncertainties remain.
“We're very far along on that disinflationary path,” she said. “We're in that slow recovery that started in the first quarter and that we hope will continue.”
The ECB cut interest rates for the first time in almost five years last month, cutting the key rate from a record 4% to 3.75%. Analysts now to expect The ECB will cut interest rates twice more this year, in September and December.
— CNBC's Jenni Reid contributed to this report.
