"We expect the upswing to gather pace around the middle of the year, even if the uncertainties persist," Lagarde said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche. Despite this, the EU "will not see a return to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity before mid-2022," she noted.
The European official previously asserted that while the Euro area's recovery from the coronavirus has been delayed it hasn't been derailed.
Lagarde had stated that the economic environment rehabilitation from the coronavirus crisis has been delayed, but the focus "is still about crossing that bridge to the recovery."
"Our hope is that still 2021 is the year of recovery but in two phases and phase one is clearly one that it is still plagued with a very high level of uncertainty,” Lagarde said speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.