Figures released by Eurostat last week show that with annual inflation measured at 1.2%, Malta had the highest inflation in all Europe.

In July 2014, inflation in Malta measured 0.6% but this increased to 1.4% in April.

Euro area annual inflation was 0.2% in July 2015, stable compared to June. In July 2014 the rate was 0.4%. European Union annual inflation was 0.1% in July 2015, also stable compared to June. A year earlier the rate was 0.5%.

In July 2015, negative annual rates were observed in eleven Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Cyprus (-2.4%), Romania (-1.4%) and Greece (-1.3%).

The highest annual rates were recorded in Malta (1.2%), Austria (1.1%) and Belgium (0.9%). Compared with June 2015, annual inflation fell in fifteen Member States, remained stable in four and rose in eight.

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.09 percentage points), tobacco (+0.08 pp) and rents (+0.06 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.43 pp), heating oil (-0.20 pp) and milk, cheese & eggs (-0.06 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.