Good morning. It's Thursday, April 30, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast.

The vibe today is on edge as the European Central Bank meets to discuss whether to raise

interest rates, but has no good options. Also on the pod, Europe has a fuel blind spot and officials are scrambling to figure out how much energy the EU actually has in storage. And later, politicians walk into classrooms and, well, they say the wrong thing. Ian, it's you. Ian Wushart. Speaking of saying the wrong thing. Ian Wushart is back with me today. I'm Zora Schiafelovic. This is Wushart. We haven't been together for what, about three weeks, have we? Something like that. And in that time, all you've managed to do is tank the pod by telling people you hate Hulumi. Word has reached me. You've been comparing yourself to Ursula von der Leyen. And I've been comparing you to Antonio Costa. Well, like the dynamic duo of the Politico Tower.

Should we get on with it?

I guess so.

The European Central Bank, the ECB, meets today, Ian.

That's the group that sets interest rates for the Eurozone.

Did you know that?

I did know that, yeah, because I used to report on the ECB and all things economic.

Nothing ever seems to change, though,

and it looks like they're going to wait and see this week. Yeah, because inflation is high.

People are worried about the price of fuel and the way that that's affecting everything else as well.

But the lever of raising interest rates is a pretty significantly harmful one for a lot of households.

So it's a bit of a scary one to pull. People have obviously got used to inflation over the past,

I don't know, half a decade. Obviously, prices have rocketed. We talked when this podcast started a couple months ago about the rocketing price of coffee, didn't we? But everything has gone up. Everybody

knows that. Everybody listening to this podcast knows it's gone up.

Totally. And businesses are struggling because consumers obviously have a certain idea in mind about

what they might pay for a coffee, what they might pay for a soft drink, for a sandwich. Anything.

Anything, really. And then they go into a shop, they go into a supermarket. Eggs are through the roof.

You know, Donald Trump won an election based on the price of eggs is what I've heard. So it's a real worry for a lot of people and the banks have to

respond to it one way or another. What I was going to say was people I think assumed that this

rocketing inflation would stop after Ukraine. I mean, that's what really triggered this was basically

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