The Euro area annual inflation rate has climbed to 3.0 per cent, up 0.8 per cent in August from the 2.2 per cent registered in July 2021.

However, in August 2020 a year earlier, the rate was -0.2 per cent. Additionally, in the European Union (EU), the annual inflation was reported at 3.2 per cent.

This is 0.7 per cent greater than the July 2021 rate of 2.5 per cent relative to the previous year in 2020 when the rate was 0.4 per cent. The inflation figures were released by the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat).

The lowest annual rates were observed in Malta (0.4 per cent), Greece (1.2 per cent) and Portugal (1.3 per cent). The highest annual rates were recorded in Estonia, Lithuania and Poland (all 5.0 per cent).

Compared with July, the annual inflation remained stable in one Member State and rose in twenty-six. Eurostat reports that the highest contribution to the annual Euro area inflation rate in August 2021 came from: energy (+1.44 percentage points, pp), followed by non-energy industrial goods (+0.65 pp), services (+0.43 pp) and food, alcohol & tobacco (+0.43 pp).