In BrusselsReport.eu, Leonardas Marcinkevičius, a senior expert at the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) and part of the EPICENTER network, argued that the European Central Bank has responded faster to this year’s energy shock than in 2021. Back then it dismissed inflation as “transitory” and waited roughly a year, whereas this time the Governing Council has already raised rates twice. He welcomed the much slower growth in money supply, but warned that the deeper problem remains: interest rates are set centrally in Frankfurt rather than by borrowers and lenders. He also warned that government borrowing can undermine monetary tightening, leaving Europeans facing both higher loan payments and higher prices. The piece draws on a new EPICENTER and LFMI paper, “Money Supply Returns to the Path of Growth: Has the ECB Learned from the Pandemic?”, which uses euro-area data from 1999 to 2025.