FACTBOX-ECB policymakers' recent rate comments

July 6 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank kept its main refinancing rate at a record low of 1.0 percent in July, and most analysts expect that it will keep rates at that level until at least the end of next year. Below are highlights of ECB policymakers' comments since the Governing Council's July 2 policy meeting. To read full stories, double-click numbers in brackets. For highlights of ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet's June 4 news conference, click on . EWALD NOWOTNY (AUSTRIA), JULY 6 "A strategy of taking money from the ECB and then putting it back into the deposit facility can only be short-term." Said he saw "no necessity" to bypass banks to kick start the flow of credit. "For banks, it is in their own interest to provide credit." "I expect that it (covered bond program) will increase credit ... we will look at the development over the summer and then have a review in the autumn.

It's too early to speculate about further steps." JEAN-CLAUDE TRICHET (PRESIDENT), JULY 5 "We need to, at the same time, act quickly and audaciously when it is necessary...but at the same time make credible the medium and long term, make credible the fact that monetary policies are not going lead to inflation which I believe very probably is the case." (ID:nL5623303] JOSE MANUEL GONZALEZ-PARAMO (EXECUTIVE BOARD), JULY 4 "Our point of view is that interest rates right now are appropriate for the euro zone as a whole." "We have some quarters of negative growth left, but less intense than what we have seen." CHRISTIAN NOYER (FRANCE), JULY 3 "In the period to come ... steering the economy in an environment of high uncertainty will prove particularly challenging." Any dilution of the fundamental mandate of maintaining price stability would be "extremely detrimental" to global prosperity. "When assessing the economic and financial environment, central banks should take a longer term perspective and be more alert to incipient financial imbalances." (Compiled by Frankfurt newsroom) ([e-mail]; [phone]; Reuters Messaging: [e-mail]) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

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