Eurostat: Poland with one of the highest inflation rates in EU

Compared to May of this year, consumer prices in Poland in June increased by 1.4%.

"The euro area annual inflation rate was 8.6% in June 2022, up from 8.1% in May. A year earlier, the rate was 1.9%. European Union annual inflation was 9.6% in June 2022, up from 8.8% in May. A year earlier, the rate was 2.2%" - Eurostat said at its website.

"The lowest annual rates were registered in Malta (6.1%), France (6.5%) and Finland (8.1%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Estonia (22.0%), Lithuania (20.5%) and Latvia (19.2%)" - we read.

"Compared with May, annual inflation fell in two Member States and rose in twenty-five. In June, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from energy (+4.19 percentage points, pp), followed by food, alcohol & tobacco (+1.88 pp), services (+1.42 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+1.15 pp)" - Eurostat said.

The Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, abbreviated as 'HICP', is a consumer price index that is produced by each European Union Member State using a harmonised methodology. These indices are directly comparable between countries and can be aggregated. The aim is to provide a high-quality and comparable measure of consumer price inflation.

The HICP serves two main purposes:

- it is used as an indicator for assessing price convergence with regard to a possible accession of a country to the monetary union (euro currency);

- it is a measure of price stability for the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy strategy. The Governing Council of the ECB has defined price stability in terms of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area.

In addition, like any other consumer price index the HICP is used for economic analyses and indexing contracts.

HICP data are published by Eurostat, while national CPIs are published by National Statistical Institutes.