The European Central Bank's (ECB) 4% policy rate has to be held sufficiently long, ECB Chief Economist Phillip Lane said on Friday and reiterated that the central bank is still very data-dependent.

Lane noted that the Euro area economy this year will be "fairly muted" and added that there are a lot of reasons for the economy to stagnate this year. 

Market reaction

These comments don't seem to be having a significant impact on the Euro's performance against its major rivals. As of writing, the EUR/USD pair was down 0.1% on the day at 1.0648.