OREANDA-NEWS. Euro area annual inflation was 0.1% in August 2015, down from 0.2% in July. In August 2014 the rate was 0.4%. European Union annual inflation was 0.0% in August 2015, down from 0.2% in July. A year earlier the rate was 0.5%. These figures come from Eurostat , the statistical office of the European Union .

In August 2015, negative annual rates were observed in eleven Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Cyprus (-1.9%), Romania (-1.7%) and Lithuania (-1.0%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Malta (1.4%), Austria (0.9%) and Belgium (0.8%). Compared with July 2015, annual inflation fell in fourteen Member States, remained stable in four and rose in ten.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.10 percentage points), vegetables (+0.09 pp) and tobacc o (+0.08 pp), while fuels for transp ort (-0.55 pp), heating oil (-0.25 pp) and milk, cheese & eggs (-0.07 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.

Geographical coverage

The euro area consists of Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Gr eece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland. The European Union includes Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denm ark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands , Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finla nd, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The euro area and European Union data refer to the respective country compositions at a specific point in time. New Member States are integrated into the aggregat es using a chain index formula.

Methods and definitions

The annual rate measures the change of the Harmoni sed Indices of Consumer Prices (H ICP) between a month and the same month of the previo us year, and the monthly rate compares the indices between the two latest months. An impact is a measure showing the change in the inflation due to the inclusion of a sub-index. The impact takes account of both the weight and whether the inflation for that sub-index is higher or lo wer than the all-items inflation rate.