Statistics Insights: Inflation is an interactive publication produced by the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the Eurosystem. The publication aims to make it easier to understand, use and compare euro area and national statistics. It presents the statistics visually, catering for colour blindness, uses reader-friendly terms, is digitally reusable via the embed function and is available in 23 EU languages.
Information on data
The data are updated in real time and available from the Statistical Data Warehouse.
The inflation data are produced by Eurostat, together with the national statistical institutes, and are available here.
The data for the second chart in Section 3.1 and the charts in Section 3.2 are produced by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs and are available here.
Disclaimer
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the work and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction (with the exception of the personal inflation calculator that cannot be used for any commercial purpose, including distributing, sublicensing and/or selling copies of original or modified code), including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions.
The software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind.
In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the Software or the use of or other dealings in the Software.
The Software is built upon and made available by Eurostat and Lietuvos bankas. See also the Eurostat Disclaimer and the Terms of use of Lietuvos bankas.
The ECB/Eurostat/Lietuvos bankas take no responsibility for any replication of the content of the Software, or any other form of redistribution.
Cover photo © monticello, Xsandra, guenterguni, Rost-9D, scanrail, SergeiKorolko/iStock
Chapter 2.2 photo “Antique refrigerator” © jgroup/iStock
Chapter 2.2 photo “Modern household refrigerator with control display” © Grassetto/iStock
The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) is committed to providing its statistics free of charge as a public good of high quality irrespective of any subsequent commercial or non-commercial use. All publicly available ESCB statistics may be reused free of charge on the condition that the source is quoted (e.g. “Source: euro area statistics”) and that the statistics (including metadata) are not modified.
Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique
Inflation rates do not only vary across countries, they also vary over time.
1.3.1 Inflation over time
It is important to have a sense of medium-term developments in inflation. This is because year-on-year inflation in the prices of individual goods and services can fluctuate a great deal in the short term (from month to month), so focusing on average inflation over the medium to longer term provides a clearer picture of developments.
For this reason, inflation rates of several individual goods and services are grouped into categories. Monitoring developments in groups of goods and services may give a better picture of price developments over time and a more reliable indication of how prices may develop over the medium term.
1.3.2 An overview of inflation developments over time
The euro area inflation rate was [Value 1]% in [Date 1]. Even though in the short term inflation might change in response to temporary economic fluctuations, a different picture emerges if we take a medium-term perspective. The same is true for specific categories of goods and services, as some of them have recorded more volatile price developments over the years. Use the interactive visuals to compare inflation rates for different categories over time. Is there a specific category that is more volatile?
Click to interact and compare countries