This price index for industrial production reveals that in April, the euro area recorded a remarkable 37.2 percent year-on-year increase from the previous April. This figure stands as the strongest annual rise among all historical series, exceeding March’s 36.9 percent and underscoring a sustained acceleration in industrial pricing across the eurozone. The data, published by Eurostat, signals broad-based inflationary pressure within industrial sectors and suggests a continuing shift in production costs and pricing power for manufacturers across the region.
Looking at the European Union as a whole, the annual rise in industrial prices for April reached 37 percent, up by four-tenths of a percentage point from the prior month. This movement reflects a persistent trend of price escalation across diverse industrial activities, reinforcing the perception of a broad, sector-wide inflation dynamic rather than a narrowly confined spike in a few segments.
On a monthly basis, the pace of price increases in most industrial sectors cooled in the euro area. After a strong prior period, the month-on-month change fell from 5.3 percent to 1.2 percent in March. Among the EU’s twenty-seven members, the monthly rise likewise decelerated, easing from 5.4 percent to 1.3 percent. This deceleration indicates a temporary moderation in monthly inflation pressures, even as annual inflation remains elevated relative to historical norms.
When compared with April 2021, euro area industrial production prices show a pronounced sectoral split. The energy sector stands out with a staggering 99.2 percent year-on-year increase, followed by a 25.1 percent rise in intermediate goods, 11.2 percent in non-durable consumer goods, 8.5 percent in durable goods, and 7.2 percent in capital goods. This distribution highlights how energy costs are driving the bulk of the inflation signal, while other categories also contribute meaningfully to the overall price landscape.
In the EU, the pattern mirrors the euro area but with slightly different magnitudes. Industrial production prices rose by 97.2 percent annually in the energy sector, 25.4 percent in intermediate goods, 12 percent in non-durable consumer goods, 9.1 percent in durable consumer goods, and 7.5 percent in capital goods. The energy segment again dominates, but the spread across other categories underscores a broad inflationary impulse across the industrial chain in the European Union.
Excluding the energy component, prices in the euro area industry were still up by 15.6 percent year-on-year, while in the EU the annual rise stood at 16.1 percent. This adjustment reveals that even after stripping out energy costs, inflationary pressures persist across industrial sectors, indicating more persistent pricing dynamics that are less reliant on energy fluctuations alone.
Among the twenty-seven countries, some of the sharpest annual increases in industrial producer prices were observed in Denmark and Ireland, each recording a 62.3 percent rise, followed closely by Romania at 60.4 percent and Belgium at 52.7 percent. These outliers highlight how national factors—ranging from energy pricing to supply chain dynamics and domestic demand conditions—can amplify inflationary movements within the broader EU framework.
Compared to March, the most notable monthly declines in industrial prices occurred in Ireland, with a drop of 16.4 percent, followed by Romania at 3.2 percent, Portugal at 2.2 percent, and Italy at 0.3 percent. The variability across member states underscores the diverse economic conditions within the EU, where some economies experience rapid price corrections while others face ongoing upward pressures in specific sectors. In contrast, the countries showing month-to-month increases included Slovakia at 9.3 percent, Luxembourg at 6 percent, and Bulgaria at 4.1 percent, indicating that inflation dynamics are not uniform and can diverge considerably even within a relatively small geographic area.