Harmonised consumer price inflation: annual average rates
- Eurostat dataset
- prc_hicp_aind
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- % annual change
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 2.50 % annual change.
- Highest value: Türkiye at 34.9 % annual change; lowest: Switzerland at 0.10 % annual change.
- Cross-country mean 3.80 % annual change, standard deviation 5.26, coefficient of variation 138.3% across 38 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: +452.4% on a constant panel of 32 countries.
How synchronised is consumer price inflation across the Union? Eurostat dataset prc_hicp_aind reports harmonised consumer price inflation: annual average rates for 38 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 2.50 % annual change. The HICP is the only fully harmonised price index in Europe, which makes cross-country dispersion in inflation directly interpretable.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Türkiye (34.9), Romania (6.80), Estonia (4.80), Croatia (4.40), Hungary (4.40), all expressed in % annual change. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Switzerland (0.10), Cyprus (0.80), France (0.90), Italy (1.70), Finland (1.80). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 349.00, while the median country reports 2.85 % annual change against a mean of 3.80 % annual change.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 5.26 % annual change, giving a coefficient of variation of 138.3%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2014 and 2025 the summed value across the 32 countries reporting in both periods moved by +452.4%. The largest relative increases are observed in Poland (+3200.0%), Croatia (+2100.0%), Lithuania (+1600.0%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Slovakia (-4300.0%), Spain (-1450.0%), Portugal (-1200.0%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 32.0 % annual change from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset prc_hicp_aind ('HICP - annual data (average index and rate of change) (1996-2025)'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-02-06. Filter dimensions: unit=RCH_A_AVG; coicop=CP00. Unit of measure: % annual change. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (38 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.