Inflation in the euro area was 10.0 percent in November.

This was announced by the European statistical office Eurostat on Wednesday based on an initial estimate.

In October, the inflation rate was still 10.6 percent.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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As in Germany, the consequences of the lower oil price are also being felt in the euro area as a whole.

Although energy prices are still significantly higher than a year ago, there was a fall in November compared to October.

In some euro countries, political interventions have also artificially depressed inflation.

Food prices, on the other hand, have continued to rise month by month.

The core rate of inflation, which is inflation excluding the sharply fluctuating prices for energy and food, which is often the focus of monetary policy, stagnated at 5.0 percent in November compared with October.

There is currently a debate among economists as to whether inflation has already peaked.

This could be supported by the fact that oil prices will not rise as they did in the past post-pandemic phase in the near future.

However, the further development of energy prices is very uncertain overall.

Many companies also want to pass on the higher prices they incur themselves to their customers in the coming months.

However, the economic downturn could make it increasingly difficult for them to push through higher prices.

Sharp drop in inflation in the Netherlands

Depending on the euro country, the development is very different.

"The rough rule is that the further east the country is and the more dependent it is on Russian gas, the higher the inflation rate," said Thomas Gitzel, economist at VP Bank. 

The Netherlands recorded a sharp drop in inflation.

Here, however, inflation had also been extraordinarily high in the past few months compared to other euro countries.

Now in November, the inflation rate has fallen from 16.8 to 11.2 percent.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Bankhaus Berenberg, said that the inflation rates in the Netherlands over the past two months were more of a statistical outlier, and now the Netherlands are again close to the trend in the euro zone.

“That probably has something to do with the technical details;

when and how exactly the periodic energy bills for households appear in the price index,” said Schmieding.

In the Netherlands, reported energy price inflation has fluctuated sharply: from an annual price increase of 60 percent in June to 113.8 percent in September and 99.7 percent in October to 41.5 percent in November.

"Excluding energy, the rate in the Netherlands fell from 7.8 percent in October to 7.5 percent in November," said Schmieding.  

In France, which has recently had the lowest inflation rate among all euro countries due to political interventions, the inflation rate remained at 7.1 percent in November, as the French statistics office Insee announced on Wednesday.

Analysts had expected a slight decline to 7 percent.

Inflation in Spain surprisingly fell to 6.6 percent in November, down from 7.3 percent in October.

That was the fourth decline in a row.

Economists say that, among other things, changes in energy prices in Spain have a faster impact on inflation than in Germany, for example. 

According to national calculations, the inflation rate in Austria rose slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 11.1 percent.

According to European calculations, however, it fell from 11.5 to 11.1 percent. According to Statistics Austria boss Tobias Thomas, the rise in prices for the most important inflation drivers, household energy and fuel, has also recently weakened somewhat in Austria.