The year-on-year inflation in the euro area stood at 2.8% in June, a decrease of four tenths compared to May and the lowest increase in the cost of living in the bloc since March, according to the preliminary estimate released by Eurostat.
This relief in the general rate is partly due to a more moderate increase in energy costs, which rose by 8.7% year-on-year, down from 10.8% recorded in May. In parallel, fresh food prices increased by 3.2%, compared to 4% in the previous month.
Regarding other components, non-energy industrial goods repeated a year-on-year increase of 0.9% in June, the same as in May, while services became more expensive by 3.2%, down from 3.5% noted a month earlier.
If the impact of energy is excluded from the calculation, euro area inflation would have been 2.2% in June, two tenths less than in May, confirming the trend of price moderation.
For its part, the underlying rate, which excludes energy, food, alcohol, and tobacco from the index, fell to 2.4%, compared to 2.6% in the previous month.
Among the euro countries, the lowest annual rates corresponded to Malta (1.9%) and Estonia and France (2% in both cases). At the opposite end, the highest increases were seen in Lithuania (5.5%), Bulgaria (5.3%), and Croatia (4.2%).
In Spain, harmonized inflation remained at 3.6% year-on-year in June, representing an unfavorable price differential of eight tenths compared to the euro area average.
Thus, Spain's harmonized inflation rate was the highest among the major euro economies, above France, where it stood at 2%, Germany, with 2.4%, and Italy, with 3.1%.