Brussels (EFE).- The annual inflation rate fell by one tenth both in the euro area and in the European Union (EU) as a whole in February compared to the previous month, to 8.5% and 9.9 %, respectively, according to data published this Friday by the Eurostat community statistics office.
Inflation thus chains four months of declines in both areas since the peak it reached last October, of 10.6% in the euro area and 11.5% in the Twenty-seven.
On the other hand, core inflation, which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco due to its more volatile behavior, rose three tenths in February, up to 5.6%, while the increase in prices if only excluding energy and fresh food was 7.4%, also three tenths more.
Eurostat thus confirms its preliminary estimates for the euro area in a month in which Spain ranked as the EU country with the third lowest inflation (6.0%, one tenth less than initially estimated), only behind Luxembourg (4.8%) and Belgium (5.4%).
Fresh food, the main driver of inflation
The prices of fresh food, alcohol and tobacco have replaced energy as the main driver of inflation, registering a rate of 15% in February, nine tenths higher than that of January, while the rise in energy prices eased to 13.7%, which represents a decrease of more than five points with respect to the previous month.
Within the first group, the price increase was greater among processed foods, alcohol and tobacco, 15.4% (four tenths more than in January), than in fresh foods, with 13.9% (2.6 percentage points more).
On the other hand, the inflation of non-energy industrial goods increased by one tenth, up to 6.8%, while that of services grew four tenths, up to 4.8%.
Thus, the drop in the inflation rate in the euro area since October is explained by the reduction in energy prices (which rose by 41.5% that month), since the price of the rest of the components has continued to rise since so.
Among the EU countries, fifteen of them saw the inflation rate decrease, while it increased in ten states and remained stable in two.
In addition to Luxembourg, Belgium and Spain, Greece (6.5%), Cyprus (6.7%), Malta (7.0%), France (7.3%), Finland (8.0%) and Denmark (8.3%).
Although they exceeded this average, Portugal (8.6%), the Netherlands (8.9%), Germany (9.3%), Slovenia (9.4%), Sweden (9.7%) and Italy (9. 8%) registered levels below 10%, while the rest reached double digits.
This was the case for Austria (11.0%), Croatia (11.7%), Romania (13.4%), Bulgaria (13.7%), Slovakia (15.4%), Lithuania and Poland (both 17.2%), Estonia (17.8%), Czech Republic (18.4%), Latvia (20.1%) and Hungary (25.8%).