Eurozone annual inflation was -0.2% in August 2009, up from -0.7% in July. A year earlier the rate was 3.8%. Monthly inflation was 0.3% in August 2009, according to Eurostat, the statistics office of the EU. EU27 annual inflation was 0.6% in August 2009, up from 0.2% in July. A year earlier the rate was 4.3%. Monthly inflation was 0.3% in August 2009.
Inflation in the EU Member States
In August 2009, the lowest annual rates were observed in Ireland (-2.4%), Portugal (-1.2%) and Cyprus (-0.9%), and the highest in Hungary (5.0%), Romania (4.9%) and Poland (4.3%). Compared with July 2009, annual inflation fell in eight Member States, remained stable in two and rose in seventeen.
The lowest 12-month averages4 up to August 2009 were registered in Ireland (0.0%), Portugal (0.1%) and Luxembourg (0.6%), and the highest in Latvia (7.7%), Lithuania (6.9%) and Romania (6.4%).
Eurozone
The main components with the highest annual rates in August 2009 were alcohol & tobacco (4.5%), miscellaneous goods & services (2.2%) and household equipment (1.7%), while the lowest annual rates were observed for transport (-3.2%), housing (-1.3%) and food (-1.2%). Concerning the detailed sub-indices, restaurants & cafés (+0.15 percentage points), tobacco (+0.14) and rents (+0.12) had the largest upward impacts on the headline rate, while fuels for transport (-0.67), heating oil (-0.35) and gas (-0.16) had the biggest downward impacts.
The main components with the highest monthly rates were clothing (2.3%), transport (1.1%), housing, household equipment and hotels & restaurants (0.3% each), while the lowest were food (-0.5%), education (-0.4%), health and communications (-0.1% each). In particular, fuels for transport (+0.13 percentage points), garments (+0.12) and heating oil (+0.04) had the largest upward impacts, while vegetables (-0.06) and fruit (-0.05) had the biggest downward impacts.
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.
