Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, during a news conference in Amsterdam on Thursday.Credit…Peter Dejong/Associated PressThe European Central Bank entered into a new era on Thursday, as policymakers clearly stated their plan to raise interest rates next month for the first time in more than a decade.To prepare for that move, the bank confirmed that it would stop growing its bond-buying program at the beginning of July. After eight years, the end of negative interest rates and massive bond buying, especially of government debt, is in sight. Across the eurozone, inflation has outpaced economists’ expectations: The annual rate of price increases climbed to 8.1 percent in May, the highest since the creation of the euro currency in 1999. Policymakers have been spurred into faster action against inflationary forces that are being stoked by the war in Ukraine.“High inflation is a major challenge for all of us,” the bank said in a statement, as it warned that inflationary pressures had “broadened and intensified,” reaching more goods and services. Most of the goods and services used to measure inflation are rising by more than 2 percent, the central bank’s 2 percent target. Inflation, excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be more volatil …
