EU: Annual inflation rate down to 0.6% in May

ANKARA

The European Union's annual inflation rate was 0.6% in May, down from 0.7% a month earlier, the bloc's statistics office announced Wednesday.

A year earlier, the 27-member bloc's annual inflation rate was 1.6%, according to a report revealed by Eurostat.

Eurostat said the eurozone's annual inflation rate also fell from 0.3% to 0.1% month-on-month in May.

Compared with April, annual inflation fell in 20 member states, rose in five, and remained stable in two.

The lowest annual rates were registered in Estonia (-1.8%), Luxembourg (-1.6%), Cyprus and Slovenia (both -1.4%).

Poland (3.4%), Czechia (3.1%) and Hungary (2.2%) posted the highest inflation rates during the same period.

"In May, the highest contribution to the annual euro area inflation rate came from food, alcohol and tobacco (+0.64 percentage points, pp), followed by services (+0.59 pp), non-energy industrial goods (+0.06 pp) and energy (-1.20)," it added.