The European Central Bank, which on Monday celebrates its 10th birthday, will almost certainly later this week notch up a year of unchanged interest rates.

Barring an exceptional upset, the ECB’s governing council will leave its main interest rate at 4 per cent on Thursday in the latest extended period of monetary policy inactivity since its creation a decade ago. For 2½ years until December 2005, it left interest rates at 2 per cent as the eurozone struggled to regain economic momentum.