In June, the year-on-year inflation rate in the Eurozone decreased from 2.6% in May to 2.5%. The highest rate remains in services at 4.1%, the same as in May, followed by food, alcohol, and tobacco (2.5% compared to 2.6% in May), non-energy industrial goods (0.7% compared to 0.8% in May), and energy (0.2% compared to 0.3% in May). Core inflation (inflation excluding food and energy) remained unchanged at 2.9%.
A summary of the situation in each country according to Eurostat data:
In May, only Belgium significantly exceeded the ECB’s double target inflation rate of 2%, with an inflation rate of 5.5%. Croatia dropped out of this group as its inflation decreased from 4.3% in May to 3.4%.
The group of countries with an inflation rate of up to 1.0% includes Finland (0.6%), Italy (0.9%), and Lithuania (1.0%). Latvia left this group due to an increase in inflation from 0.2% to 1.4%.
From the perspective of the Czech Republic, the May inflation rate was 2.8% according to EU methodology. This is still lower than in Austria (3.2%) but higher than in Slovakia (2.4%) and Germany (2.5%). The June inflation rate for the Czech Republic will be published by the Czech Statistical Office on July 10th.
The next ECB board meeting is scheduled for two weeks from now; it will be interesting to see how the ECB takes this inflation rate, especially the core inflation, into account.