Prices

The Main aggregates in the national accounts (MNA dataset) include gross domestic product (GDP), value added by main economic activity, main expenditure components and aggregated income statistics. These data are collected and disseminated by the European Commission (Eurostat) and the national statistical authorities. The MNA dataset also includes additional indicators calculated by the ECB, such as implicit GDP deflators, contributions to growth, unit labour costs and its components (compensation per employee and labour productivity), as well as business investment. Data for the euro area, EU and the EU Member States are available.

The residential property price indicator for the euro area is an average of non-harmonised country indicators based on data from national sources. It generally includes new and existing dwellings as well as houses and apartments; however, the coverage varies to some extent across countries. It gives an indication of the broad trend-development of residential property prices in the euro area, but does not have the same accuracy as other euro area statistics.

Wholesale and farm gate prices data for the agricultural commodities are retrieved from the European Commission’s DG Agriculture and Rural Development. DG-AGRI is responsible for the implementation of agriculture and rural development policy for the European Union. The monthly data stored is a weighted average based on the number of days in the week/month; the time horizon of the price series depends upon availability of the commodity in the country under analysis.The DG-AGRI dataset includes data on farm gate and wholesale prices for a number of agricultural products from the Cereals, Oils and Fats, Meat and Dairy farm sectors for EU Member States.Given the lack of the availability of many time series observations, a parallel dataset has been created that aims at filling the gaps in the price series. In this parallel dataset, outliers have been removed according to the following criteria: any observation very far from the mean remains in the price series in order not to distort data, while zero values, which must be incorrect, have been removed. Four geographic macro areas4 of European Union countries have been created based on the characteristics they share for instance, similar agricultural outputs and similar weather conditions.Missing values are estimated using a correlation-based approach that identifies which countries' price series can serve as indicators for others with missing data. First, correlation coefficients are calculated for the month-on-month percentage changes in food prices across different countries. These coefficients are then compared within the same geographic area and food category. To uncover additional patterns and connections, each individual series is also compared to aggregate series representing the average month-on-month percentage changes in prices. Ultimately, the most highly correlated price series is used to fill in the gaps, applying its month-on-month percentage change multiplied by the corresponding correlation coefficient to the last available price point.Four food aggregates are computed using the PPP consumption weights to aggregate the series to get to country series for each of the product groups requested. The European series are created from these country aggregates and weighted using HICP weights and index formula.For further information, please visit the European Commission Agricultural Markets Data Portal.

Available headline data are generally compiled from commercial data supplied by MSCI (www.msci.com). For the experimental European aggregates, when a country prefers a different source these data are included replacing that reported by MSCI and using the appropriate code. The data are heterogeneous in terms of the transaction or valuation based methodologies used. Therefore, comparisons between countries or of different sources within individual countries should be made with caution. The indicators are generally available at quarterly frequency. Breakdowns of the data are also available but these are strictly shown by the type of data collection i.e. transaction based or valuation based. 

As of 4 February 2026 onwards, the euro area HICP inflation will undergo major methodological changes, according to the announcement by Eurostat. On the same day, the ECB will also discontinue the current Indices of Consumer Prices - ICP dataset on the ECB Data Portal and replace it with a new HICP dataset that will accurately reflect the methodological changes by Eurostat.The Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area is published by the European Commission (Eurostat) and generally available from 1996 onwards for aggregates; product-level indices might start later. Euro area results are obtained by aggregating indices for individual countries.The HICP is broken down following the European classification of individual consumption according to purpose (ECOICOP v. 2) and by goods and services special aggregates derived from it. The HICP covers monetary expenditure on final consumption by resident and non-resident households on the economic territory of the euro area. The seasonally adjusted HICP data are compiled by the ECB.In addition to the HICP, the HICP dataset also contains the time series of the Owner-Occupied Housing Price Index (OOHPI), which tries to track the prices of owning and maintaining a dwelling based on purchase prices (both house prices of dwellings new to final consumers and construction prices for self-built dwellings) and maintainance costs (maintenance services and insurances). These data are provided by Eurostat as well.