Inflation Trends Split EU Along Historic East-West Divide
As Western Europe struggles to revive sluggish consumer price growth, poorer nations in east are facing the opposite problem.
(Bloomberg) -- Sign up here to receive the Davos Diary, a special daily newsletter that will run from Jan. 20-24.
While western Europe struggles to revive sluggish consumer price growth, the mostly poorer nations in the east are facing the opposite problem.
The European Union‘s average inflation rate was unchanged at 1.6% last year. But a closer look at individual countries reveals a far less uniform picture, with post-communist nations registering the biggest acceleration in prices. Poland’s inflation rate, as captured by Eurostat’s harmonized consumer price index, jumped 2.1 percentage points last year, the largest increase in the still 28-nation bloc.
On the other side of the spectrum, 11 of the 13 EU countries which saw inflation rates decline last year are from western Europe. All of them, except for the U.K. and Sweden, are also part of the euro region, which has deployed unprecedented monetary stimulus to rekindle price growth.
--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss.
To contact the reporters on this story: Barbara Sladkowska in Warsaw at bsladkowska@bloomberg.net;Adrian Krajewski in Warsaw at akrajewski4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wojciech Moskwa at wmoskwa@bloomberg.net, Peter Laca
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.