In Germany, an inflation rate of more than 5 percent last caused a stir in November.

There are now euro countries in which prices rise quite differently.

Mind you, countries that fall under the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), i.e. no exotic overseas countries with broken currencies.

There is already speculation as to who will be the first to show a double-digit inflation rate.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in business.

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It's about the Baltic States: In Latvia the inflation rate in November was 7.4 percent, in Estonia 8.4 percent, and in Lithuania it was 9.3 percent.

Why is that?

Why are inflation rates so different under the same monetary policy?

And: Can we learn something from this development for future inflation in this country too?

Specifically, people in Lithuania complain, like here, that petrol has become so expensive, including heating oil and gas.

But the price for milk in the supermarket has also increased by more than 30 percent, reports Petras Cepkauskas from the Lithuanian price comparison platform Pricer.

Virtually all food prices have risen.

Wages rose too, but less than prices.

Economist: Differences could be "explosives"

Jan Körnert, economics professor in Greifswald who has dealt specifically with the Baltic countries, could still contain “explosives” in the large differences in inflation rates in the euro area. On December 16, the ECB will deal with how monetary policy should react to inflation. However, the central bank governors of the Baltic countries have not yet been pushing particularly hard in the ECB Council that the central bank should tighten monetary policy. "The Balts have so far been relatively calm," says Michael Schubert, ECB expert at Commerzbank.

On request, Gediminas Šimkus, the head of the central bank of Lithuania, said: "As a small and very open economy, we have imported most of the current rise in inflation." Demand in other markets ”. Estonian central bank chief Madis Müller made a similar statement: It is mainly about temporary effects, but one has to be careful. Mārtiņš Kazāks, the head of the central bank of Latvia, said that the ECB should ultimately have monetary policy for the entire euro area, not for individual countries. He is convinced, however, that the central bank will “take all necessary measures to achieve the monetary policy goal of an inflation rate of 2 percent in the medium term”.

Fateful devotion or just getting used to the higher inflation?

The Institute for the World Economy (IfW) in Kiel has dealt with the reasons why the inflation rates in the Baltic countries are still significantly higher than in Germany, and came up with two groups of factors.