The euro area annual inflation rate was 8.9% in July 2022, up from 8.6% in June, compared to a year earlier, the rate was 2.2%. European Union annual inflation was 9.8% in July 2022, up from 9.6% in June and 2.5% in the same period of 2021.

The lowest annual rates were registered in France, Malta (both 6.8%) and Finland (8.0%) while the highest annual rates were recorded in Estonia (23.2%), Latvia (21.3%) and Lithuania (20.9%). Compared with June, annual inflation fell in six Member States, remained stable in three and rose in eighteen.

In July, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from energy (+4.02 percentage points, pp), followed by food, alcohol & tobacco (+2.08 pp), services (+1.60 pp) and non-energy industrial goods (+1.16 pp).

The increase in inflation would trigger more rate hikes by ECB in the next meeting, 50 bp being most likely to happen.

Also, production in construction went down by 1.3% in euro area and by 1.2% in EU in june 2022 compared with may 2022. In the euro area, civil engineering decreased by 1.3% and building construction by 1.2%.

Among member states, the largest monthly decreases in production in construction were recorded in Hungary (-5.2%), Slovakia (-5.0%) and Austria (-4.8%). Increases were observed in Slovenia (+1.7%), the Netherlands (+1.0%) and Finland (+0.2%).