Euro zone inflation rose to 2.4% in December, meeting expectations

Euro zone inflation rose to 2.4% in December, meeting expectations


A man rides bicycle on a snow-covered street after snowfall in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on December 29, 2024. 

Kirill Kudryavtsev | Afp | Getty Images

Annual inflation in the euro zone rose for a third straight month to reach 2.4% in December, statistics agency Eurostat said Tuesday.

The reading was in line with the forecast of economists polled by Reuters and marked an increase from a revised 2.2% print in November. Core inflation held at 2.7% for a fourth straight month, also meeting economists’ expectations, while services inflation nudged up to 4% from 3.9%.

Headline inflation was widely expected to accelerate after hitting a low of 1.7% in September, as base effects from lower energy prices fade. The full extent of increases in the reading — along with persistence in services and core inflation — will be closely watched by the European Central Bank, which markets currently expect to cut interest rates from 3% to 2% across several trims this year.

chart visualization

The pace of price rises in the euro zone’s largest economy, Germany, hit a higher-than-expected 2.9% in December, according to figures published separately this week. Inflation in France meanwhile came in at 1.8% last month, below a Reuters analyst poll forecasting a 1.9% print.

The euro extended early-morning gains against the U.S. dollar following the print, trading 0.37% higher at $1.0428 at 10:13 a.m. in London. Traders are assessing whether the euro could decline to parity with the greenback this year, if the U.S. Federal Reserve proves significantly more hawkish than the ECB.

Haig Bathgate, director of Callanish Capital, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that ECB policymakers would not be overly concerned by a hotter monthly inflation reading, as long as it was broadly in line with expectations.

“There’s now a lot more predictability in a lot of the data series we’re seeing… the direction of travel of rates [lower] in Europe is much more predictable than say, the U.K.,” Bathgate said Tuesday.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.



Source

Lucid softens full-year production forecast as EV maker misses second-quarter estimates
World

Lucid softens full-year production forecast as EV maker misses second-quarter estimates

A Lucid Air electric vehicle (EV) at the company’s showroom in Tysons, Virginia, US, on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images Lucid Group on Tuesday softened its production outlook for the rest of the year as it reported second-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street expectations. The electric vehicle maker now […]

Read More
Nvidia says its AI chips don’t have a ‘kill switch’ after Chinese accusation
World

Nvidia says its AI chips don’t have a ‘kill switch’ after Chinese accusation

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to the media at a hotel in Beijing, China July 16, 2025. Alessandro Diviggiano | Reuters Nvidia on Tuesday rejected Chinese accusations that its data center GPUs for artificial intelligence include a hardware function that could remotely deactivate the chips, which is commonly called a “kill switch.” “NVIDIA GPUs do […]

Read More
Russia weighs in on U.S.-India tariff spat, saying New Delhi can choose its own trade partners
World

Russia weighs in on U.S.-India tariff spat, saying New Delhi can choose its own trade partners

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin bids farewell to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi following their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2024.  Gavriil Grigorov | Via Reuters Russia on Tuesday weighed into the growing spat between India and the U.S., with the Kremlin saying New Delhi is free to choose its own trading […]

Read More