The year-on-year inflation rate in the Euro area accelerated by one tenth of a percentage point in April compared with the previous month, reaching 7%, compared with 6.9% in March, while in the European Union (EU) as a whole, prices eased to 8.1% from 8.3% in March, accumulating five months of moderation, according to data published by Eurostat.
Among EU countries, the lowest year-on-year inflation rates were recorded in Luxembourg (2.7%), Belgium (3.3%) and Spain (3.8%), while the highest annual rates were recorded in Hungary (24.5%), Latvia (15%) and the Czech Republic (14.3%).
In the Euro area, energy recorded a year-on-year rise of 2.4% in April, following a 0.9% decline in the previous month, while food prices eased their rise to 10% from 14.7%.
In the case of services, prices rose by 5.2% year-on-year in April, one tenth of a percentage point more than in March, but non-energy industrial goods rose by 6.2%, four tenths of a percentage point less than in March.
Excluding the impact of energy, the year-on-year inflation rate in April stood at 7.4%, compared with 7.9% in the previous month, while leaving out the impact of the price of food, alcohol and tobacco, the underlying inflation rate moderated to 5.6% from 5.7% in the previous month.
Thus, in April, the underlying inflation rate in the euro area experienced its first sign of moderation in year-on-year terms since June 2022, after nine consecutive months of ever-greater increases.
