THE World’s Most Travelled Man, who’s logged over 31,000 hours in the air, has revealed the two European destinations he isn’t a fan of.

And it’s bad news for fans of a cheap holiday to Bulgaria or Spain.

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Fred Finn, 84, is recognised by the Guinness World Records for the title – one he’s held since 1983.

One place he said he didn’t have a good time in is Bulgaria because of a bad experience he encountered there when he visited.

He told Sun Travel: “I got ripped off there very badly. They copied my credit card and I lost £600.

“It was a very expensive dinner…. things like that put you off from going back.

“I’m sure now I’ll get friends telling me I’m wrong. Its my own opinion, that’s all.”

The Sun’s Jonathon Samuels recently visited the capital Sofia, and said it may not have the “pizzazz of Paris or romance of Rome but does have charm and history”.

Another place Fred isn’t in a rush to go back to is Spain.

He explained: “I think parts of Spain have become over crowded.

“There are some good parts to the country, such as the Spanish islands, for example.

“But again, you’ve got to choose which one very carefully – with a lot of them, Brits just go to the bars there to drink.

“I think, ‘Why do they go on holiday then?’”

There is one place he raves about that he says Brits should stop overlooking – the country of Georgia.

He said: “People don’t really know about Georgia. Kutaisi has tremendous history and Batumi on the coast is like the Monaco of the Black Sea.

“The food is good, the dancing they do is fantastic. It’s got the highest mountain in Europe, it’s got villages and lakes. It’s also very hospitable there.

“And it’s the oldest wine producing country in the world, they’ve been doing it 5,000 years.

Fred, born in Canterbury, started flying as young as 13, although his millions of miles racked up when he joined a major American corporation.

Why you should visit Georgia in 2025

AIRLINES British Airways and easyJet are launching direct flights from the UK to Tbilisi for next year, making it the place to visit.

The British Airways service will take off every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from London Heathrow.

EasyJet’s new route from London Luton to Tbilisi will take flight just two days later on April 1, 2025.

By and large, Tbilisi is a pretty inexpensive city to visit, with bargain hotel rooms from £34, based on two people sharing a room.

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Overnight stays are even cheaper if you’re prepared to bunk in a hostel dorm, with beds for just £6 and private rooms for £10.

A new international airport could be built in Tbilisi, according to the country’s prime minister.

The new airport will increase passenger flow and boost the country’s economy by $129.65million over the next few years.

Over the years, he says he has flown 15 million miles in the air, including a record 718 flights on Concorde.

When it comes to his favourite airline, British Airways is his top carrier.

He said: “I’ve flown with British Airways more than anyone. By a long shot, I don’t think it’s the best airline in the world, because it doesn’t have the money to compete with Etihad, Qatar and Singapore Airlines.

“But British Airways is like a pair of old slippers for me, they’re actually very comfortable, you know what they look like, and you know what they’re going to do.

“I like the colour scheme, it’s restful, and it’s comfortable.

“Usually when I’m on a flight they announce ‘we’ve got a guy on board that has flown more than the whole crew put together’.

“That kind of thing goes on, which is good.”

Fred has now written a book called Sonic Boom where he shares the incredible journeys he’s undertaken over the years, as well as the evolution of commercial aviation and its impact on global culture.

The book is available for pre-order now here.

Former Chief Pilot and Director of British Airways, Al Bridger has shared how food on flights has changed through the years in his book Flavour of Flight: The Food and Drink of British Airways.

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European carmakers are planning dozens of affordable electric models next year as they brace for an “EV winter” driven by tough new EU carbon emission targets and fierce competition from China.

Ahead of this week’s Paris Motor Show, the big European manufacturers, who have also been squeezed by falling demand, are focused on recovering lost market share with new vehicles.

“We are here to fight,” said Renault chief executive Luca de Meo earlier this month as he unveiled a battery recycling project and plans to support the company’s EV business. “We have challenges everywhere. It’s not a walk in the park but we see a lot of potential.” 

Renault is the only major European carmaker that has not issued a profit warning recently. Volkswagen, Stellantis, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have all cut their earnings forecasts because of problems on multiple fronts from intense competition to weak European demand and rising inventories in the US. 

The pressure on the industry will increase again next year when new EU emissions targets come into force. These require carmakers to cut carbon emissions from their fleets — by increasing the proportion of electric and hybrid vehicles — or face large fines. 

Executives say meeting the emissions targets has been made harder by a recent slowdown in the growth of EV sales: consumers have become more cost conscious and subsidies have been cut in big markets such as Germany.

Some carmakers, with the exception of Stellantis, have called for the targets to be watered down or delayed, to avoid fines that could add up to a collective €51bn by 2030 according to consultancy AlixPartners. 

Addressing an Italian parliamentary committee on Friday, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the shift to EVs required by the rules would add significant costs for carmakers.

“In a system that cannot absorb more price because the consumer does not want to pay more, we are inserting 40 per cent more cost,” he said.

Barclays analyst Henning Cosman estimates global carmakers will launch more than 100 EV models this year in Europe and around 70 in 2025, but the cheaper prices required to make sales could cause an “EV winter”, he added. 

“If you are a consumer, you almost feel like buying an electric vehicle today is a mistake because you know that you can get a better one with longer range and newer technology and most likely at a lower price pretty soon. That’s really the downward spiral,” he added.

European carmakers, knowing they would be under pressure to sell cheaper models in 2025, have focused on the more expensive end of the market this year.

That has made them less able to compete with the likes of China’s BYD and Xpeng which have a €20,000 price tag for some models — about half the average price of an EV in Europe according to Transport & Environment, an NGO. 

“There could be a price war, but I’m not sure the Europeans are the best place to win it,” said Alexandre Marian of AlixPartners. 

EVs are already less profitable for carmakers before any new discounting next year. Across the industry, gross margins are about 15 percentage points lower than they are for combustion engine models, according to Barclays.

Some cheaper models will be displayed at the motor show, including an under €20,000 car made by Leapmotor, the Chinese partner of Stellantis.

Renault is already taking orders for its electric R5, priced at around €25,000. While Citroën, another Stellantis brand, will show models including the C3 Aircross compact SUV, though only the non-electric versions are priced at around €20,000.

According to research compiled by Renault, EU carmakers will need a 20 to 22 per cent share of the European market share to comply with the emissions targets. But at the moment, they are stuck at less than 15 per cent. 

Analysts say the targets are achievable if carmakers buy emissions credits from rival groups that sell cleaner vehicles. But the cost of doing this for the likes of Volkswagen and Ford, which are the most behind on the targets, are likely to drag their profits down further.

Ahead of the motor show, Luc Chatel, the head of French car lobby PFA, told radio station RTL that “manufacturers and the whole industry are investing billions of euros” to shift to EVs.

But he added a warning on the “serious danger” for the industry. “Consumers aren’t following any more. This means manufacturers will no doubt have to pay European fines next year, which is pretty surreal.”

A DAD has been ordered to tear down his “oppressive” and “overbearing” 10ft-high fence because it’s “too dangerous”.

But neighbours have backed the dad’s plight, after he argued he put it in place outside his home in Longton in 2022 to protect his young family from a “dangerous and crime riddled” area.

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The illegally erected wooden barrier, which stands half the height of the house and dwarves pedestrians walking by, is now subject to enforcement action.

Whilst the householder declined to discuss the fence row, locals rallied around to support his action and branded the council “ridiculous, uncaring and bureaucratic”.

The dad lives in the large house in Longton, near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, with his wife, young daughter and dog.

He put up the tan panelled fence in 2022 to replace a smaller one and a hedge.

It requires planning permission as it is over a metre height but the householder said he had “no idea” consent was needed.

He put it up at the front of his property on busy Trentham Road, a residential street with rows of shops and small businesses.

He told planners on Stoke-on-Trent City Council he had done so “for the safety of his family”.

But they insist he has to remove it, fearing it could set a precedent with residents taking that “as a free-for-all to put up whatever they wish”.

Locals have hit out at the council for being “so petty”, with hair salon boss Kimberley Grocott, saying: “Who knows what height a fence should be and if it needs planning permission?

“Planners are being ridiculous and very uncaring.

“As a mum of three, and if I was living at that house on a very busy road, I think the fence height is fine. It gives the family privacy.”

Kimberley, 33, who runs KG Hair, which is opposite the semi detached home, told The Sun: “This area is dangerous and crime riddled.

“I don’s see what the issue is. The fence is the same height as the bush at the next door house.”

Kimberley, who revealed she had been the victim of a terrifying attempted armed robbery at her salon in January, added: “Residents and businesses owners must be allowed to protect their properties.

“The council is being so petty.

“The house has a front and back garden and faces the main road. As well as extra protection it gives them protection.

“If the parents are sunbathing in the summer or their kid is running around naked it gives them privacy.”

Kimberly told how a masked raider had entered her premises, while she was tending a client, threatening her at knife point while demanding cash.

She heroically calmed the situation, and he fled.

The 49-year-old local man was later arrested, charged and jailed for six years for armed robbery.

“With the crime going on here everyone is trying to install more security measures,” she added.

Councillors had acted after a complaint from a neighbour about the illegal and “unauthorised” fence which had been erected to replace a lower hedge previously bordering the property.

The fence is three times the height of a legal fence but no planning application was submitted.

Following the sole complaint, the householder submitted a retrospective planning application for a smaller 2.3m fence was but this was subsequently rejected by the authority.

They have now approved enforcement action to remove the fence in line with their officers’ recommendation, who declared it “overbearing in nature and does not relate well to the prevailing character or context of the area” and said that it creates an ‘’oppressive means of enclosure”.

The planning committee had been told that the property owner had erected the fence “for the safety of his family” and did not realise it needed planning consent.

But many locals disagree with the planners’ decision.

A local businesswoman said: “The higher the fence the better.

“The crime rate around here is horrendous and the home owners, who have a young child, want to make sure that no one climbs over into their grounds.

“There is nothing wrong with that fence!”

She added: “Planners are being too bureaucratic. What is the issue? It is the same height as the neighbour’s front hedge and that isn’t being ripped down.”

Her colleague added: “Good on him for putting up a high fence! The only thing i would say is that is could do with a lick of pain or varnish.”

She said: “The rate of crime around here is getting worse. Gangs are walking around the streets in a threatening manner and young lads are being abusive and kicking in doors.”

Cafe owner Susan Brunt said: “The council has rules and regulations but the family has put up a high fence to protect themselves.

“At first when I saw it I thought ‘it’s a little bit high’ but then I got that they had done it for security measures and privacy, and there is nothing wrong with that.”

Her assistant added: “I don’t blame them for having a high fence. The place is full of druggies and burglars.

“Just recently a thief stole a woman’s car which she had left running with her little girl in the back. He drove off in it with the child.”

Retired HGV driver and neighbour Stephen Amison said: “I’ve got no worries with the height of that fence, and I hadn’t even noticed.

“But looking it at I don’t think it is too high. You can never be too safe on a main road.

“I’m 5 feet 10 inches and it is way taller that me but that’s a good thing.

“There’s so much crime, you hear the police sirens going off 25 times a day.”

Planners ruled that not taking action against a clear breach of planning rules would set a dangerous precedent.

Councillor Ross Irving said: “I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve got a duty to uphold what the regulations stipulate.

“This is clearly a breach of those regulations, and I think we have a duty to enforce it, because if we don’t, people will take that as a free-for-all to put up whatever they wish.”

“We have planning conditions for a reason. If we don’t take action on this it sends the wrong message out.”

The council will now serve the property owner with an enforcement notice calling for the fence to be removed.

The house holder declined to comment when contacted by the Sun, with the wife saying: “I am very busy and do not feel the need to discuss this matter.”

We have contacted the council for comment.

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There was always another modernism. Not the white-walled, minimal, austere variety but an organic, warm, eccentric and often totally bizarre architecture, which presents as an outlier but has always been there as modernism’s mad but much more fun alter ego. 

The modernism we tend to know – the Bauhaus, brutalism, the international style – emerged around the end of the first world war. But so did organic architecture – this odd, parallel modernism, which grew from the expressionism of the era rather than the mechanistic obsessions of more conventional moderns. Its model was the tree and the landscape, the cave and the forest rather than the machine. Even today it appears futuristic and, despite being eclipsed by its more serious cousin, it has never gone away.

The expression “organic architecture” was coined by Frank Lloyd Wright and he, of course, being in possession of architecture’s most monstrous ego, laid claim to it. But it had been there all along – and in forms wilder than even Wright ever attempted. The now demolished Bavinger House, conceived by architect Bruce Goff, was a spiralling helter skelter of a building, its twisting roof held up by cables strung from a mast like a maypole, its chunky stone walls like something from The Flintstones. None of this prepared the visitor for the interior: a landscape of upside-down suspended mushrooms above a pool, and a floor that looks like the result of an earthquake. Its shocking demise in 2016 led to a reassessment of organic buildings, this outsider architecture that is both so magnetic – and so nuts.  

The movement’s major figures are a disparate bunch. There was Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian mystic, occultist, theosophist and founder of anthroposophic medicine. He is known for almost everything (mostly for the Steiner and Waldorf Schools he set in motion and even the cosmetic brand, Weleda) – except, that is, his architecture. Yet a visit to the Goetheanum, a brief tram ride from Basel, is a revelation. This vast, proto-brutalist concrete monster eloquently expresses the organicist’s aversion to right angles; a building that looks as if it was moulded from wet clay, every column capital writhing and metamorphosing into some weird plant. One of Steiner’s concerns was that organic architecture should look as if it had grown and unfolded like a plant from a seed. It doesn’t seem possible that this visionary structure was begun a century ago – its predecessor, a wooden dome, looked just as wonderful but burnt down in 1922. 

You can see links to the weird world of Gaudí, buildings like wet-sand-drip castles or fairytale fantasies. At the same time in Germany, though, Erich Mendelsohn was designing the Einstein Tower, a streamlined expressionist observatory, a stationary building somehow full of motion expressing the way in which the physicist’s ideas distorted our notions of space and time; and other architects including Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring and Hans Poelzig were building a riposte to the strictures of Bauhaus modernism with a fluid, strange freedom.  

Organic architecture seems to flourish at times of existential crisis; in the Weimar years and then again in the cold war (and arguably now once again in the age of climate crisis). The fear of nuclear annihilation seemed to spur a generation to look underground at houses evocative of bunkers, or protective, elemental caves. Mexican architect Juan O’Gorman went from conventional modernist to organic Womble with his Casa O’Gorman (1948-54) in a lava cave in Mexico City’s El Pedregal neighbourhood, another long-lost wonder. 

His countryman Javier Senosiain has built an enduring oeuvre of biomorphic homes in psychedelic colours, which veer between an acid trip and an extra-planetary 1960s sci-fi set with an unsettling echo of the Teletubbies. Incredible, trippy interiors wrap and warp around so that floors become walls, which morph into dining tables, ledges and shelves, obviating the need for any conventional furniture (which would never fit in a house without straight walls), and the houses nestle into rich gardens and alien landscapes. Senosiain’s Nautilus house, built in Naucalpan in 2007, is a glimpse into the everyday life of a hermit crab (with extra stained-glass psychedelia), its design earthquake-proof; while his earlier Casa Orgánica (1984) in Mexico City, an experiment in bio-architecture, is a bit like being stuck in a giant ear. Invigoratingly eccentric but otherworldly beautiful – and, bizarrely, nothing new.  

Hungarian architect Antti Lovag was sculpting similarly alien forms from the 1960s, the most famous of which is the house he designed for Pierre Bernard but which was later bought by Pierre Cardin. The Palais Bulles, a house of bubbles near Cannes, echoes the sci-fi desert primitivism of Star Wars and created a foamy Riviera dreamscape of bizarre forms fused into something that occasionally resembles sea creatures, UFOs or fantastical coral reefs along with, of course, a 500-seater auditorium like a Greek theatre with the Mediterranean as its background. 

Another Hungarian, Imre Makovecz, developed a branch of organic architecture that emerged from Steiner’s philosophies about nature and metamorphosis, adding in hints of Frank Lloyd Wright and a big dose of Hungarian vernacular carpentry. Makovecz developed his style working in the woods outside Budapest in the 1980s, where he’d been effectively exiled after becoming a little too outspoken. Instead of disappearing as he was expected to, he used the wood from the forests to sculpt a new language, working with elderly, marginalised craftsmen from Transylvania and using their skills to make something deliberately different from the Soviet-style panel houses that had become the default Eastern Bloc architecture.  

Beginning with campsite buildings and community centres, he worked up to extraordinary churches that exude numinous mystery, and a funeral chapel (at Farkasrét in Budapest, 1975) reminiscent of the inside of Jonah’s whale, the coffin placed where the heart would be – what a metaphor for resurrection. Of all these architects, Makovecz was the one I knew best (I wrote my first book on him), and he embodied the best of organic architecture as well as its potential pitfalls, from political drift to closeness to kitsch. He also inspired a whole school of architects in the country, a new generation of designers working with wood to craft powerfully expressionistic buildings; it created a powerful sense of place, purpose and identity for left-behind villages.  

Wright might not have been right that it was all about him, but it was through his adherents and acolytes that organic architecture reached its domestic apogee. Perhaps it is somehow in tune with an American desire for difference, an independent prairie spirit that acknowledges the landscape. As well as Bruce Goff there was Herb Greene, whose magical Prairie Chicken House in Norman, Oklahoma (1961), makes its wooden shingles look like the ruffled feathers of a monstrous bird about to take off, or a shaggy lone buffalo on the plains; or the Hobbit-like, undulating Creek House by Arthur Dyson. Then there’s the work of James Hubbell: the Sea Ranch Chapel in California, for instance, is an exuberant wave with foaming crest made in timber shingles, stones and patinated copper by an architect-artist who conceived his buildings as total works of art for all the senses.  

The Wright acolytes continued to experiment with the organic in design, branching off in all directions – like John Lautner, whose super-modern, organic-tinged midcentury modernism became a favourite for Hollywood production designers searching for villains’ lairs; and Ken Kellogg, whose Doolittle House on the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park in California remains one of the most remarkable houses you’ve probably never heard about. 

Shifting away from the warmth of timber, this is a harsher desert dwelling – a house that looks like some kind of armadillo squashed into the hillside. Inside, the walls swoop and curve, embrace and liberate; brutalism without the mass. More akin to something like Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House in its segmented deconstruction, it also allows the topography in, rocks and boulders poking through into the interiors to create elemental accents. Like so many of the best organic houses, it appears to be emerging from the landscape, not imposed upon it. And the movement continues: through the fantastical feats of parametric design by Zaha Hadid Architects and other contemporary innovators such as Mad Architects.

“Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spider’s spinning,” wrote Wright. “Buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.”

Perhaps our age of impending climate catastrophe has encouraged us to look anew at buildings that bury themselves into the earth, that recreate forests and waves, that acknowledge rather than resist the fundamental forces of nature. Perhaps these remarkable, expressive, eccentric structures give us a little notion that we ought to be working with the earth, and not against it. 

A MUM has vowed to spend her People’s Postcode Lottery winnings with her pals and family as she doesn’t want it sitting in the bank.

Angela Plant, of Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, bagged £333,333 along with another neighbour.

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She then immediately swore to go on a spending spree with her partner, family and friends.

Angela said she would stick a “little bit” away but wanted to spread joy with a wish list of treats that includes a string of exotic holidays and a box at the footie for her partner.

She also wants to pay for a Greek wedding for her eldest son, girls’ trips with her closest friends – and even a Florida trip for her first grandchild, not due until December.

The former secure unit nurse said: “This year has been up and down.

“I’m just going to make sure all my close pals and family are looked after.

“You don’t want profit in the bank, you want to go out and spend it.

“We’ll keep a little bit, but you don’t want to save for a rainy day. You’d be bankrupt with the amount of rain we’ve had.”

Angela has no plans to give up her latest job as a companion in an old folk’s home but she is getting to work on her spending.

That includes making sure her eldest lad Jordan and his wife-to-be Anna Ranch have the wedding of their dreams.

She said: “My oldest son is going to get married in Zante in Greece next year. We’ve paid a bit towards the wedding.”

And she grinned: “I suppose I’ll have to pay it all now!”

The couple are also expecting their first child – a little girl – in a few weeks.

Angela said: “We’ve got our first grandchild on the way, and she is going to be spoiled rotten.

“I’ve always, always wanted to be a grandmother. She is due on the 19th of December. We’ll have a really good Christmas.

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“It’s important to do things as a family. Good memories last forever.

“I’ve got good memories from the past of going with the children to Florida, so I would like to take my granddaughter there.”

She added: “Andrew’s a Leeds United fan. I might get him a box or a season ticket. He hasn’t missed a home game for about 30 years.”

Angela has caught the travel bug and now wants to see even more of the world.

I’m not one for putting it in the bank.

Angela Plant

She said: “I want to see Japan and China and Singapore.

“I’d like to be able to open a map and say, ‘I’d like to go there and there.’ This opens up so many more opportunities.

“We’ve both worked our socks off and this gives us the chance to do a little bit more. I’m not one for putting it in the bank.”

But Angela’s win is tinged with sadness after losing two friends in the past year.

Now she wants to ensure her other pals are given a much-needed lift.

She said: “I’m going to treat my friends. We’ve all been through so much. I’m very, very lucky to have loads of good friends.

“We’ll have a good time spending some of it.”

How to play the People’s Postcode Lottery?

For just £12 a month, players can sign up through the official website to have a chance of winning millions of pounds.

Once signed up, players are automatically entered into every draw and prizes are announced every day of each month.

Tickets play for the Daily Prize, worth £1000 and revealed every single day.

Tickets could also win a jackpot of £30,000 for Saturday and Sunday’s Street Prize draws.

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People’s Postcode Lottery also offers a £3million Postcode Millions draw each month – where your ticket plays for a share of the cash prize fund.

Winners are notified by email, text, post, or phone call, depending on the prize they win.

Jackpot winners are visited by the lottery team in person.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The Eurozone’s weak economic growth and sluggish consumer price rises have raised concerns that the European Central Bank may be facing the threat of too little rather than too much inflation, economists have warned.

The prospect of a bout of reduced price rises is a sharp turnaround from recent historic levels of high inflation, which forced the ECB to push interest rates up to a record 4 per cent in September 2023.

Monetary policymakers will meet this Thursday and are widely expected to reduce rates. Having previously not anticipated a cut until December, investors now view a quarter-point reduction to 3.25 per cent as a given.

The October cut could usher in a series of faster and steeper reductions in borrowing costs in an effort to stop inflation from persistently undershooting its target, economists said. Financial markets are now pricing in that the ECB will lower rates to just 1.7 per cent by the second half of next year. In September, annual inflation fell to 1.8 per cent, putting it below the ECB’s 2 per cent medium-term goal for the first time in more than three years.

“Avoiding a fall back into the pre-Covid world [of inflation below 2 per cent] will be one of the ECB’s biggest challenges,” said Jens Eisenschmidt, chief Europe economist at Morgan Stanley, who until 2022 worked at the ECB. He predicts the ECB’s key deposit facility rate will have halved to 1.75 per cent by December 2025, but added: “It is very well possible that this level will not be the end [of the easing cycle].”

Historically, too little rather than too much inflation had been the ECB’s bigger problem. In 93 of 120 months to July 2021, when the recent surge in prices began as demand rebounded during the pandemic, inflation was lower than the ECB’s goal. The 2 per cent target was introduced that summer.

It replaced a more conservative goal of inflation being “below, but close to 2 per cent”. To stop further falls in inflation, the ECB embarked on an unconventional monetary policy, inflating its balance sheet through bond purchases and pushing its key interest rates into negative territory.

Minimal price increases increase the danger of falling into deflationary territory, which can trigger a self-reinforcing downward cycle as consumers postpone purchases while shrinking income makes it harder to pay down debt. Overcoming deflation can be much harder for central banks than reining in inflation.

For now, the latest ECB staff forecasts predict that annual inflation will hit its 2 per cent target in the fourth quarter of 2025 and stay well above that level over the first nine months of the year.

But central bank officials were concerned that the forecast, which was published in September, might be too rosy even before the month’s annual 1.8 per cent inflation figure was published. According to the minutes of the September meeting, rate-setters noted that “the risk of undershooting the target was now becoming non-negligible”.

Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece, said this week the most recent data “suggests that perhaps we get to 2 per cent in the first quarter of 2025”.

This is despite an expected temporary rise in headline numbers by the end of the year. Due to a statistical quirk, the year-on-year comparison in November and December will be distorted upwards as oil prices in the final months of last year fell temporarily.

But the ECB “will see through that”, said Bill Diviney, ABN Amro’s head of macro research.

As wage rises in leading Eurozone economies respond with a time lag to the past surge in inflation, headline inflation numbers next year are also expected to be higher than the more feeble underlying economic dynamics would suggest, said one person familiar with the thinking of a member of the governing council.

“In the short term, the weak growth outlook is the more critical factor but the risk of undershooting [the 2 per cent inflation target] is already part of the equation,” the person said.

ECB president Christine Lagarde said last week that the central bank would take into account increasing confidence that the ECB’s medium-term inflation target was in touching distance, a remark that increased investors’ expectations of a rate cut.

Yet Sebastian Dullien, research director of Düsseldorf-based Macroeconomic Policy Institute, said weak growth and sharply falling inflation suggested that the ECB “is acting too slowly [on adjusting rates] once again”, adding that the central bank’s analysis of the drivers of inflation was “flawed”.

Dullien argued that the inflationary surge between 2021 and 2023 was a temporary one driven by higher energy prices and supply chain bottlenecks rather than a fundamental rise in demand. He said the ECB increased interest rates too much, harming an economy that was already hit by low productivity, tepid investment and an ageing population.

“The overly restrictive monetary policy exacerbated some of the structural issues,” Dullien added.