EU HICP Inflation by Country
Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) annual rates of change for the EU27 aggregate and six major member states — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Greece — from 2010 through January 2026. The ECB's official mandate measure for eurozone inflation.
Data
| Year | EU27 | YoY Change | Germany | France | Italy | Spain | Netherlands | Greece |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2.5 | -0.1pp | 2.3 | 0.9 | 1.6 | 2.7 | 3.0 | 2.9 |
| 2024 | 2.6 | -3.8pp | 2.5 | 2.3 | 1.1 | 2.9 | 3.2 | 3.0 |
| 2023 | 6.4 | -2.8pp | 6.1 | 5.7 | 6.0 | 3.4 | 4.2 | 4.2 |
| 2022 | 9.2 | +6.3pp | 8.6 | 5.9 | 8.7 | 8.3 | 11.6 | 9.3 |
| 2021 | 2.9 | +2.2pp | 3.2 | 2.1 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 0.6 |
| 2020 | 0.7 | -0.7pp | 0.4 | 0.5 | -0.1 | -0.3 | 1.1 | -1.2 |
| 2019 | 1.4 | -0.4pp | 1.4 | 1.3 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 2.7 | 0.5 |
| 2018 | 1.8 | +0.2pp | 1.9 | 2.1 | 1.3 | 1.7 | 1.6 | 0.8 |
| 2017 | 1.6 | +1.4pp | 1.7 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 1.1 |
| 2016 | 0.2 | +0.1pp | 0.4 | 0.3 | -0.1 | -0.4 | 0.1 | 0.0 |
About this Dataset
EU27 HICP inflation averaged 2.5% across 2025 and then eased further to 2.0% in January 2026 — the first print below the ECB’s 2% target since the post-pandemic inflation surge began in earnest. That reading, confirmed by Eurostat on 25 February 2026, marks an extraordinary four-year round trip: from below 1% during the pandemic trough of 2020, the bloc’s headline rate surged to a 9.2% annual average in 2022, peaked intra-year at 11.5% in October 2022, and then disinflated to on-target within 28 months — faster than any comparable episode in post-Maastricht European monetary history.
The Netherlands recorded a monthly HICP print of 17.1% in September 2022, the highest reading among the major eurozone economies during the energy crisis. By December 2025, the same country had re-converged to 2.7% — a 14.4 percentage point fall in 27 months.
The 2025 country cross-section is analytically consequential for rate path modelling. France, at a 0.9% annual average, sits nearly 1.1 percentage points below the ECB’s 2% target and represents the weakest inflation outcome among the six economies covered. Germany’s 2.3%, Italy’s 1.6%, and France’s 0.9% are all sub-target, while the Netherlands at 3.0%, Greece at 2.9%, and Spain at 2.7% remain modestly above it. This configuration — with a majority of major member states at or below target — creates asymmetric pressure on the Governing Council to ease, though services inflation stickiness and wage growth in Germany have complicated the dovish case.
Key dataset parameters:
- Source: Eurostat PRC_HICP_MANR — monthly HICP annual rates of change
- Coverage: January 2010 to January 2026 (193 monthly observations per geography)
- Methodology: COICOP CP00 all-items HICP; percentage change versus the same month of the prior year
- Geographies: EU27 aggregate, Germany (DE), France (FR), Italy (IT), Spain (ES), Netherlands (NL), Greece (EL)
- Frequency: Monthly source data; annual averages used in the table
- Base: Not index-based — expressed directly as annual rate of change (%)
The 2022–2023 inflation episode exposed a structural feature of the eurozone that economists had theorised but rarely observed at this magnitude: the single monetary policy constraint amplifies real divergence. Spain’s HICP peaked at 10.7% in July 2022, but its energy mix and regulatory price cap mechanisms meant it disinflated faster than Germany, which hit 11.6% in October 2022. Italy’s 12.6% October 2022 peak — the highest in this cohort — reflected a relatively gas-intensive industrial base combined with lower pre-existing structural inflation credibility than Germany. By contrast, France’s semi-regulated energy tariffs capped the HICP shock at 7.1%, creating a Franco-German spread of more than four percentage points at the peak — a divergence large enough to render a single rate setting near-incoherent for both economies simultaneously.
For sovereign credit and rates analysts, the 2025 configuration presents a distinct set of risks. Italian BTPs benefit from sub-target HICP (1.6% in 2025), which raises real yields and supports carry. But below-target inflation in an economy with debt-to-GDP above 135% also signals weaker nominal growth dynamics, making the debt sustainability calculus more sensitive to ECB rate normalisation. Spain’s relatively elevated 2.7% average — persistent even after the 2022 shock — reflects tight services inflation linked to tourism sector pricing power and a tighter labour market than the eurozone median, a dynamic that supports Bono carry at the cost of slower ECB accommodation.