Euro area annual inflation was -0.3% in February 2015, up from -0.6% in January. In February 2014 the rate was 0.7%. European Union annual inflation was -0.2% in February 2015, up from -0.5% in January. A year earlier the rate was 0.8%.

These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In February 2015, negative annual rates were observed in twenty Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Greece (-1.9%), Bulgaria (-1.7%) and Lithuania (-1.5%).

Positive annual rates were recorded in Sweden (0.7%), Malta (0.6%), Austria (0.5%), Romania (0.4%) and Italy (0.1%).

Compared with January 2015, annual inflation fell in six Member States, remained stable in four and rose in seventeen.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.12 percentage points), rents (+0.11 pp) and tobacco (+0.07 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.64 pp), heating oil (-0.19 pp) and telecommunications (-0.06 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.