In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde stated that headline inflation rose to 4% in October, driven primarily by an increase in energy inflation (to 20.8%) stemming from the Middle East conflict and reduced refining capacity, while core inflation remained stable at 2.5%. She noted that the ECB has not yet observed unexpected second-round effects such as wage pressures, and reiterated that the central bank will continue to make its monetary policy decisions on a meeting-by-meeting basis, guided by incoming data.