(Bloomberg) -- The euro-zone economy is weaker than expected and the European Central Bank must assess the knock-on effect for consumer prices at its meeting next week, Executive Board member Frank Elderson told Slovenia’s Delo newspaper.

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“A number of recent indicators suggest that downside risks to economic growth are already materializing,” he said in an interview published Tuesday. “So we will need to carefully assess whether this has any implications for our inflation outlook.”

Elderson, who rarely comments publicly on monetary policy, said officials are coming “with an open mind” to the Oct. 16-17 meeting, and that he’s looking forward to “a very genuine and open discussion.”

The ECB is widely expected to lower borrowing costs for a third time this year at the meeting in Slovenia. Policymakers have become more worried about softer-than-expected economic data — in particular, the risk of a sudden deterioration in the labor market.

At the same time, price growth is slowing more quickly than envisaged. In September, it eased below the 2% goal for the first time since 2021.

President Christine Lagarde dropped a rate-cut hint last week amid growing confidence in reaching the target in a timely manner. On Monday, France’s Francois Villeroy de Galhau said officials will “quite probably” decide on such a move next week.

“Before the meeting, we will take note of all the data and analysis and, as we have said many times before, we will take a meeting-by-meeting approach,” Elderson said.

He said, however, that the direction for rates in the period ahead “is very clear.”

“If our projections that inflation will converge toward our 2% target in the second half of 2025 continue to be confirmed, we will continue to gradually ease our restrictive policy stance,” he said. “At the same time, we need to maintain flexibility regarding the pace of adjustments.”

While services inflation “remains strong” — at 4% in September — ECB’s projections foresee “a deceleration going into the new year,” he said, according to an English-language transcript of the interview, published on the ECB’s website.

Geopolitical tensions — such as the escalation in the Middle East — “could raise energy prices, shipping costs and other transport costs in the short term, which could also lead to disruptions to global trade, which would push prices up,” he said. Inflation could also increase “if wages rise more than expected or if profit margins increase,” he said.

On the other hand, he also sees downside risks to inflation, “such as lower than expected demand or an unexpected deterioration in the economic environment in the United States and globally.”

In the euro area, growth is “falling somewhat short of our projections,” he said. “We look at a broad range of data, but we have seen that households are consuming less than anticipated and firms are less keen to invest than we had projected.”

(Updates with more comments starting in eighth paragraph.)

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