EU annual inflation up to -0.1 pct in May

July 14,2016

Annual inflation in the European Union was -0.1% in May, up from -0.2% the previous month. A year earlier the rate was 0.3%. The figures come from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office.

The lowest annual rates were registered in Romania (-3.0%), Bulgaria (-2.5%) and Cyprus (-1.9%), while the highest annual rates were recorded in Belgium (1.6%), Malta (1.0%) and Sweden (0.8%). Negative annual rates were observed in sixteen Member States.

Compared with April 2016, annual inflation fell in nine Member States, remained stable in eight and rose in eleven.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.12 percentage points), rents and tobacco (both +0.07 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.53 pp), heating oil (-0.20 pp) and gas (-0.13 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.