The euro area annual inflation rate was 6.9% in March 2023, down from 8.5% in February. A year earlier, the rate was 7.4%. European Union annual inflation was 8.3% in March 2023, down from 9.9% in February. A year earlier, the rate was 7.8%. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The lowest annual rates were registered in Luxembourg (2.9%), Spain (3.1%) and the Netherlands (4.5%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Hungary (25.6%), Latvia (17.2%) and Czechia (16.5%). Compared with February, annual inflation fell in twenty-five Member States and rose in two.
In March, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from food, alcohol & tobacco (+3.12 percentage points, pp), followed by services (+2.10 pp), non-energy industrial goods (+1.71 pp) and energy (-0.05 pp).
