The eurozone’s annual inflation rate for December has just been confirmed at 0.8 per cent, in line with expectations and the preliminary reading of the data.

Eurostat, the EU’s offical data provider, also confirmed that prices in the last month of 2013 rose by 0.3 per cent from November in the shared currency area.

From the full release:

The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from electricity (+0.11 percentage points), tobacco (+0.08) and restaurants & cafés (+0.05), while telecommunications (-0.14), fuels for transport (-0.13) and medical & paramedical services (-0.07) had the biggest downward impacts.

The European Central Bank’s inflation target is 2 per cent.

If inflation stays significantly below target in the months ahead, it is likely to stoke calls for the ECB to do more. If price pressures were to continue to disappoint, the most likely options would be another cut to the benchmark main refinancing rate or negative deposit rates, which amount to a levy on banks for funds parked in the central bank’s coffers.

For the wider EU area:

Annual inflation was 1.0% in December 2013, stable compared with November. A year earlier the rate was 2.3%. Monthly inflation was 0.3% in December 2013.

The lowest annual rates were observed in Greece (-1.8%), Cyprus (-1.3%), Bulgaria (-0.9%) and Latvia (-0.4%), and the highest in Estonia, Austria and the United Kingdom (all 2.0%) and Finland (1.9%). Compared with November 2013, annual inflation fell in nine Member States, remained stable in four and rose in fourteen. The lowest 12-month average rates4 up to December 2013 were registered in Greece (-0.9%), Latvia (0.0%), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal and Sweden (all 0.4%), and the highest in Estonia and Romania (both 3.2%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 2.6%).