Inflation in the euro area has fallen further.

As the European statistics office Eurostat in Luxembourg announced on Wednesday after an initial estimate, the inflation rate in January was 8.5 percent.

In December it was 9.2 percent.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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At the end of last year, the rate had fallen somewhat due to numerous government interventions in energy prices in various euro countries.

It peaked at 10.6 percent in October and then fell to 10.1 percent in November and 9.2 percent in December.

One reason last year was the slightly declining energy prices, as well as government aid programs for households.

In Germany, for example, the state had taken over the December discount on the gas bill for households.

The statisticians had decided to take that into account fairly broadly when calculating the December inflation rate.

This effect has now been eliminated in January.

There have recently been reports of rising inflation rates from several euro countries: the rate in Spain surprisingly increased in January, from 5.5 to 5.8 percent.

On average, analysts had expected a decline to 4.8 percent.

In France, the inflation rate rose from 6.7 to 7 percent.

The oil price was slightly higher again in January than at times in December.

Nevertheless, overall energy prices have not risen as feared before the winter.

It is different with food: for some, the price increase was not as strong as at times last year.

Others, such as sugar, only became significantly more expensive after a certain time lag.

Paper, on the other hand, had recently become a little cheaper again after an extreme price increase last year - because the paper mills demanded a lower energy surcharge with the lower gas price.

No inflation rate from Germany published

This time there was a peculiarity in the inflation rate in Germany: the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden did not announce its own inflation rate for January.

That is expected to happen in the coming week.

This was due to software problems.

These are said to have occurred in connection with a "revision", a regular rebasing of the consumer price index.

Even the individual federal states had difficulties calculating their inflation rates.

The European statistical office Eurostat, which normally needs the value from Germany to calculate the European inflation rate, has therefore worked with an estimate for Germany, which is not to be published.

Jörg Krämer, the chief economist at Commerzbank, said he had never experienced anything like this in his long career.

He expressed no understanding that if there was an estimate for Germany that Eurostat is now working with, it would not be published.

Most economists assume that the inflation rate will fall over the course of the year.

But that does not necessarily mean that inflation will largely disappear.

Many forecasts assume that inflation will remain at 5 to 7 percent on average for the year.

How is the European Central Bank reacting?

This further development of inflation is also important for the European Central Bank: The ECB Council will meet on Thursday to decide on the future monetary policy of the central bank of the euro area.

The ECB is expected to raise interest rates again by 0.5 percentage points.

In addition, it is likely to publish details on the reduction of its multi-trillion bond holdings.

ECB President Christine Lagarde recently said quite clearly at the start of the year at Deutsche Börse that interest rates must continue to rise.

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel made a similar statement.

However, there had also been voices from the Governing Council that sounded somewhat more reserved.

Jari Stehn, chief European economist at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, is now predicting that the ECB will raise interest rates by 0.5 percentage points in February and March – as well as a last interest rate hike in May by 0.25 percentage points.