The Eurozone data demonstartes the brutality of the cost-of-living crisis around Europe, adding more pressure on the ECB.

The Eurozone inflation data shows that the inflation level rose above 10% in the month of October. Demonstrating the brutality of the cost-of-living crisis around Europe, turning the pressure dial higher for the European Central bank.

Preliminary data released at 10:00am GMT from Europe’s statistics office showed inflation was reported at an annual 10.7% last month. This becomes the highest ever monthly reading since the Eurozone was created. The 19-memebr bloc has been battling higher prices, especially on food and energy, in the last 12 months. But lot of the havoc has been caused due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

This continues to cause problems as energy costs expected to have had the highest annual rise in October, at 41.9% from 40.7% in September. Alcohol, food and tobacco prices also rose in the same timeframe, soaring to 13.1% from 11.8% in the prior month.

The data comes after different nations reported flash estimates last week. In Italy, inflation came in above experts estimates at 12.8% YoY. In France the number rose to 7.1% and in Germany it rose to 11.6%. The various rates reflect measures taken by individual governments and the level of dependency that countries have, or had, on Russian hydrocarbons.

Additionally, there are some European nations were inflation jumped by more than 20%. For example, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

The ECB’s (European Central Bank) main target is to control inflation and on Thursday it had confirmed further rate increases in the upcoming months to bring prices down. It announced that it had made significant progress in “normalising” rates within the region, however, it “expects to raise interest rates further, to ensure the timely return of inflation to its 2% medium-term inflation target”.

Last week, ECB raised rates by 75 basis points for the second time in a row. President of ECB, Christine Lagarde, stated the likelihood of a recession in the Eurozone had deepened.

Furthermore, growth figures released on Monday highlighted a GDP number of 0.2% for the Eurozone in October. Which is after the area grew at a rate of 0.8% in Q2. Only Austria, Belgium and Latvia registered GDP rates below zero.

The euro currency was trading below parity versus the dollar in early European trading hours ahead of upcoming data releases and has had very little movement since. The currency has been soft compared to the U.S. dollar, which is a big factor that the ECB has concerns about as it fears it will push inflation higher.

(Sources: CNBC.com)