Eurozone annual inflation was -0.1% in October 2009, up from -0.3% in September. A year earlier the rate was 3.2%. Monthly inflation was 0.2% in October 2009.

EU annual inflation was 0.5% in October 2009, up from 0.3% in September. A year earlier the rate was 3.7%. Monthly inflation was 0.2% in October 2009.

These figures come from Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.

Inflation in the EU Member States

In October 2009, the lowest annual rates were observed in Ireland (-2.8%), Estonia (-2.1%) and Portugal (-1.6%), and the highest in Romania (4.3%), Hungary (4.2%) and Poland (3.8%). Compared with September 2009, annual inflation fell in eleven Member States and rose in fifteen.

The lowest 12-month averages4 up to October 2009 were registered in Ireland (-1.0%), Portugal (-0.6%) and Luxembourg (-0.1%), and the highest in Romania (5.9%), Lithuania (5.4%) and Latvia (5.3%).

Eurozone

The main components with the highest annual rates in October 2009 were alcohol & tobacco (4.4%), miscellaneous goods & services (2.2%) and education (1.5%), while the lowest annual rates were observed for transport (-2.0%), housing (-1.6%) and food (-1.5%). Concerning the detailed sub-indices, tobacco (+0.14 percentage points), restaurants & cafés (+0.12) and rents (+0.11) had the largest upward impacts on the headline rate, while fuels for transport (-0.42), gas (-0.27) and heating oil (-0.24) had the biggest downward impacts.

The main components with the highest monthly rates were clothing (3.1%) and education (1.1%), while the lowest was recreation & culture (-0.3%). In particular, garments (+0.16 percentage points), footwear and heating oil (+0.03 each) had the largest upward impacts, while fuels for transport (-0.04) and package holidays (-0.03) had the biggest downward impacts.

Harmonized Indices of Consumer Prices (HICPs) are harmonized inflation figures and are designed for international comparison of consumer price inflation.

The Eurozone initially included Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland. Greece was included from January 2001, Slovenia from January 2007, Cyprus and Malta from January 2008 and Slovakia from January 2009.