In September, energy contributed the most to the annual inflation rate in the euro area (up by 4. 19 percentage points), followed by food, tobacco and alcohol (2.47 percentage points), service industry (10.8 percentage points) and non-energy industrial products (10.47 percentage points).
A year ago, the CPI of the euro zone was 3.4% in the same period. In a year, the energy crisis has brought huge cost surge to consumers because of geographical factors. This slight downward adjustment in September is unlikely to weaken the determination of ECB policymakers to raise interest rates by as much as 75 basis points on June 27th 10.
Many European scholars interviewed by China Business News believe that in order to fundamentally control inflation, it is necessary for the EU to unify its response strategies on energy issues.
According to the schedule, the EU is scheduled to hold an EU summit on 20th-2nd1to discuss energy issues such as natural gas again.
Has inflation peaked in the euro zone?
According to the data released by Eurostat, in terms of countries, compared with August, the annual inflation rate of six member countries decreased, 1 member countries remained stable, and 20 member countries increased.
By country, the countries with the lowest inflation level in the EU are France (6.2%), Malta (7.4%) and Finland (8.4%), while the countries with the highest inflation level are Estonia (24. 1%), Lithuania (22.5%) and Latvia (22.0%).
It can be seen that the Baltic countries are still the "hardest hit areas" in September, especially Estonia is experiencing the highest level of inflation in the euro zone, and the CPI rose from 6.4% in September 20021to 24.2% in September this year.
BertColijn, a senior economist at ING, told China Business News that when judging whether there are positive signs of improvement in inflation, we can see that one of the highlights is commodity inflation, and the seasonally adjusted monthly inflation has dropped from 0.8% to 0.3%. Colin explained, "In addition, the growth of service industry and food inflation is particularly prominent, and energy inflation is too high."
Specifically, in terms of energy, "with the rebound of oil prices in August and transmission to natural gas prices, energy inflation in fuel, electricity and natural gas has increased month by month." He said, "In the next few months, the drop in energy prices in recent weeks is very welcome to the overall economy, but the question is how much impact it has on consumer prices."
Colin said that with the year-on-year growth of the spot price of natural gas turning negative this month (10), we can expect that it will ease, while the futures price of natural gas will fall, albeit slowly; The annual growth rate of fuel prices is also steadily decreasing, from 15% in September to 1 1% in June.
He also predicted that the steady growth of food and core inflation is unlikely to be reversed quickly, and there are too many uncertainties in the key drivers of prices (such as geopolitics) to say that inflation has peaked at this time.
At the same time of rising inflation, in September, the purchasing managers' index (PMI) of manufacturing industry in the euro zone fell to 48.4, which was lower than the watershed of prosperity and decline (50) for three consecutive months.
Among them, the German manufacturing PMI index dropped from 49. 1 last month to 47.8, which was in the contraction range for three consecutive months, and the French manufacturing PMI index also dropped from 50.6 to 47.7.
"joint purchase of natural gas"
How long will the high inflation in the euro zone last?
Experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believe that this depends on the interaction of the following two aspects: on the one hand, the duration of labor market tension and supply chain bottlenecks, on the other hand, the corresponding measures of the central bank. Secondly, the duration of inflation also depends on the duration of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and its impact on energy prices, food prices and global growth.
Therefore, Europe and the United States are currently facing high inflation, but the economic challenges faced by the euro zone are different from those of the United States, and the euro zone economy has not been affected by overheating domestic demand like the United States.
However, the supply impact in the euro zone is much greater. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, European energy prices, especially natural gas prices, rose sharply. This effect is both inflationary and contractive: inflation lies in greatly raising the price level, while austerity lies in reducing the real income of European families and the terms of trade of various countries.
According to CCTV news reports, on June 5438+08, the European Commission proposed new emergency measures, such as joint purchase of natural gas, implementation of the European natural gas benchmark price limit mechanism, and coordination of energy supply in EU member States, in order to cope with the high price of natural gas in the EU and ensure the safety of energy supply this winter.
According to the above measures, the EU will integrate natural gas import demand and jointly purchase gas to reduce the bidding risk of member countries in the global market; Before March 2023, a new LNG price benchmark will be established, and a price correction mechanism will be proposed in the short term to impose dynamic price restrictions on natural gas transactions in the Dutch ownership transfer center to prevent extreme price fluctuations in the derivatives market; In case of emergency, help member countries to obtain natural gas from other countries.
At the same time, the European Commission also proposed to provide 40 billion euros in aid to help small and medium-sized enterprises, "to solve the energy poverty problem by supporting vulnerable families". According to statistics, EU member states have allocated more than 500 billion euros to alleviate the negative impact of energy shortage on consumers and enterprises.
However, EU countries have different views on how to deal with the crisis.
For example, Croatia and other countries want to set a ceiling on the wholesale price of natural gas, while Finland says it can accept a "temporary" price limit. Tuppurainen, Finland's Minister of European Affairs, said that Finland was prepared to "temporarily" limit the price of natural gas, but opposed to granting subsidies to consumers. Instead of subsidizing individual families, it is better to increase investment in green energy.
Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, is firmly opposed to this and hopes to deal with the energy crisis through joint procurement, reducing consumption and increasing supply. Earlier, on June 5438+02, EU energy ministers reached a consensus on joint procurement of natural gas, but failed to reach an agreement on specific measures.
Fatas, a professor of economics at INSEAD and a researcher at CEPR, said in an interview with China Business News that countries have different views on the energy crisis because it is really difficult to balance political decisions. For example, at present, the energy bills of European households are soaring, and European governments can say that they subsidize energy, but this may also be a "disaster": if they subsidize household energy, residents may continue to use a lot of energy, regardless of "increasing revenue and reducing expenditure", but if they do not subsidize it, the soaring bills are really unbearable for low-income people.
At present, an uncertain factor is whether we will face a warmer winter or the coldest winter in history. "Fatas said," obviously, there is a positive correlation between energy use and temperature. I don't think the winter we are about to see will be too exciting. "