Euro area CPI surprises to the down side in September
The analyst consensus for euro area consumer prices was off by an unusually wide margin last month, as inflation fell back across all categories outside of unprocessed food.
According to Eurostat, in seasonally adjusted terms, the single currency bloc's Consumer Price Index edged up by a tenth of a percentage point month-on-month.
But that was less than the 0.3% increase that economists had penciled-in.
On the back of that, the year-on-year rate of change in CPI fell from from -0.2% to -0.4%, instead of rising to -0.1% as expected.
It was a similar story at the so-called 'core' level, which excludes the prices of food, energy, alcohol and tobacco, where annual CPI slipped from 0.4% to 0.2% (consensus: 0.5%).
Commenting on some of the potential implications of Friday's data, Jack Allen-Reynolds at Capital Economics said: "Looking ahead, inflation will probably rise a touch next year as oil prices increase, Germany’s VAT cut is reversed, and as long as prices in the tourism sector don’t keep falling sharply.
"But weak aggregate demand means that inflation looks likely to remain far below the near-2% target. So we expect the ECB to loosen monetary policy further, perhaps before the end of the year."