So far, sub-par growth has not brought the higher unemployment that the central bankers expected and want.
Mr. Trichet said the central bank expected "very moderate" growth ahead in "an environment of particularly high uncertainty".
The central bank expected prices this year to decline 0.5 percent, and inflation next year to be just 0.3 percent, rising to 0.6 percent in 2014.
There was also growing uncertainty ahead of the latest pronouncements from the US Federal Reserve, with the central bank expected to trim its $75bn a month bond buying programme again, thus continuing to remove one of the key supports to stock markets.
A Fed spokesman told Reuters that the central bank expected to save $19 million over 20 years by buying rather than leasing space in the 173,390-square-foot building at 1709 New York Avenue NW.
Yet on October 18th, the Bank of Japan's deputy governor, Kazumasa Iwata, told parliament that the central bank expected consumer-price inflation to be out of negative territory by the end of the year.
Since the taper talk began in late May, yields on ten-year treasury bonds have jumped almost a full percentage point, one of the biggest surges in decades, and a far bigger reaction than the central bankers expected.
In their July forecast the central bankers expected an average unemployment rate of between 4.75% and 5% for the fourth quarter of 2006 and 2007, well above today's 4.5%.
Elizabeth A. Duke, a Federal Reserve Board governor, said in her testimony that the central bank expected about 2.25 million foreclosure filings this year and in 2011, and two million more in 2012.
But with the central bank expected to hike rates even higher this week, to 4.25%, Sarkozy took another opportunity to remind the ECB that sparks will probably fly over the next six months.
