The European Central Bank meets later on Thursday and all eyes will be on its comments about the outlook for inflation.

Will it or won’t it become the latest central bank to warn that price pressures are more severe — and less transitory — than they appeared a few months ago?

The difficulty for the ECB is that it wants to maintain its ultra-dovish stance to boost the region’s economy, but at the same time, it must face up to inflation expectations that are running at seven-year highs above 2%.

The prospect of slowing economic growth and central bank policy tightening is flattening bond yield curves worldwide — taking longer-dated borrowing costs lower. Europe is no exception, with German 10-year yields on Wednesday seeing their biggest daily drop in eight months.

The FTSE MIB climbed up by 0.11% to 26,829.20. In the cash markets, the DAX  Germany was trading  down by 0.10%  to 15,686.65. CAC 40  in France  rose by 0.25% to 6,770.37 while the FTSE 100  in the U.K. were  up by 0.30% to 7,230.35. ,at the time of writing.