EU: Annual inflation rate down in April

ISTANBUL

The European Union's annual inflation rate was 0.7% in April, down from 1.2% a month earlier, the 27-member bloc's statistics office announced Wednesday.

Eurostat said the eurozone's annual inflation rate also fell from 0.7% to 0.3% month-on-month in April.

In April, annual inflation fell in 26 member states and remained stable in one compared to the previous month.

The lowest annual rates were registered in Slovenia (-1.3%), Greek Cyprus (-1.2%), and Estonia and Greece (both -0.9%), Eurostat said.

The Czech Republic (3.3%), Poland (2.9%), and Hungary (2.5%) posted the highest inflation rates during the same period.

"In April, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from food, alcohol & tobacco (+0.67 percentage points, pp), followed by services (+0.52 pp), non-energy industrial goods (+0.09 pp) and energy (-0.97 pp)," it added.