The European Union said inflation in the 15 nations that use the euro should be starting to slow, while the April figure reported today could be revised higher.
"We should at least be seeing the peak in the euro area at some point now,'' Amelia Torres, spokeswoman for EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, told reporters in Brussels today.
Consumer-price inflation in the euro region slowed to 3.3 per cent this month from 3.6 per cent in March, the EU statistics office reported today.
Ms Torres cautioned that the April figure is a "flash" estimate and could be revised higher, as happened with the March inflation data.
"We have to be careful, because on previous occasions the flash was corrected and inflation turned out to be slightly higher," Ms Torres said. "We are living through uncertain times,
which makes obviously the exercise of predicting how the economy is going to evolve in the present year and even more in the next year more difficult."
"Let's see if this is confirmed, which would indeed be a good sign," Ms Torres said of today's inflation figure.
Bloomberg