The ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) is a quarterly survey of expectations for the rates of inflation, real GDP growth and unemployment in the euro area for several horizons, together with a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty surrounding them. The participants are experts affiliated with financial or non-financial institutions based within the European Union. As of 2015 the results are reported in a standalone web publication on a quarterly basis (i.e. in February, May, August and November) on the dedicated SPF webpage .
Additional information can be found in Occasional Papers No. 8 "An introduction to the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters" and No. 59 "The ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters - A review after eight years" experience" .
Euro area
Whole economy
1999 - now
1999 - four to five years ahead of the current calendar year
Quarterly
For information about the naming convention (series key dimensions and metadata), refer to the SPF underlying DSD (ECB_FCT1) maintained by the ECB.
SPF - Survey of Professional Forecasters
European Central Bank
The SPF is an input to non-monetary policy meetings of the ECB"s Governing Council (in January, April, July and October) and results are released to the public on the following day.
The release date of the upcoming survey round is announced on the dedicated SPF webpage .
An overview of the dates when the regular surveys were conducted and published is publicly available.
Download the series catalogue containing a full list of series and associated metadata of the dataset SPF in CSV format (zipped)