The Price of Europe — the crisis is over; the receipt says otherwise.

The quiet years

Inflation was near 1%. Central banks worried it was too low. That was the problem at that time.

Everything stops

Lockdowns closed the shops and nobody needed oil. By the end of 2020, prices in the euro area were almost falling.

Prices start rising early

One year before the war, the line is already going up. Shops reopen, ships wait in ports, energy gets more expensive.

The highest point

11.5% — prices had never risen this fast since the euro began.

Back to “normal”

The line returns to 2% and the news stops talking about it. But the receipt on the first page says the story is not over.

Nothing moves

Spring 2020: the economy is stopped, energy is very cheap, inflation is near zero. Nobody is worried about high prices.

Pressure builds up

People saved the money they could not spend. Factories stopped. Ships waited in ports. The pressure was there, but prices had not moved yet.

The first rises

Energy and transport go up first, months before the war. The reopening started the rise. The war made it much bigger.

One Europe

The whole map has the same low colour. Estonia and France have almost the same inflation.

It starts in the east

Look at the Baltic countries. Estonia is already at 4.5% while most of the map is still calm. The part of Europe closest to Russian gas rises first.

Two Europes

Then the whole map turns red. The east is first and worst: Estonia reaches 25% in one month, while France's worst month is 7.3%. The closer to Russian gas, the higher the inflation.

The same numbers, as bars

The same numbers, sorted from high to low. The difference between the calmest and the worst country is the biggest since the euro began.

Calmer, but not equal

Two years later the map is calmer. But it never goes back to one colour.

Before and after

Drag the line across the map. Choose any two years below. Click a country to see its own before and after.

A full year of red

The energy row is dark red for a whole year. The other rows start to turn orange too.

From energy to food

Energy calms down fast. But now food is the problem: it is still rising by more than 10% a year.

The last to come down

Services stay high the longest. This row is rents, insurance, haircuts — the things you pay for every month.

The chart you know

This is the chart from the news: a fast rise, a top, and then relief. It ends near 2%, where it started.

The price level

The same years, but now we measure how high prices are, not how fast they rise. The rise slowed down. The level stayed high. Prices are about 30% above 2019, and 2% a year means they keep rising slowly from there.

This is the new normal

Nothing in this chart comes back down. “Back to normal” was about the speed, not about the price. That is what the receipt was showing you.

€100 → €77

Take €100 from 2019. After six years of rising prices, it buys only what €77 bought then. The basket is the same. The money is worth less.

What each line costs now

Rent now costs €40 instead of €30. Groceries cost €31 instead of €22. None of this is luxury. These are the normal costs of a month.

The biggest loss

In Hungary the same €100 is worth only €61 — the biggest loss in the union. Choose your country and see your own numbers.

Two lines, two speeds

In this period, consumer prices rose 33%. House prices rose 62%. The first number is in the inflation rate you hear on the news. The second one is mostly not.

Hungary highest, Finland lowest

Hungary has the biggest rise. In Finland, houses actually got cheaper. The countries with expensive homes are not the same as the countries with high inflation.

What the inflation number leaves out

The inflation number counts rent and repairs, but not the price of buying a home. For anyone saving to buy a home, the crisis started years before 2021, and it has not ended.

The gap gets smaller

Prices rise fast during the energy crisis, and the lead of the wage line shrinks by about a third. But the wage line never falls below the price line — and that hides what happened in many countries.

Wages catch up

Governments raise the minimum wage, one after another, and the gap grows again. But the money comes after the damage was done.

The end

The middle wage line ends about 20 points above prices. But at the worst moment of 2022, seventeen of these twenty-one countries were below their 2019 level. Twenty have since climbed back. France has not — and France had the lowest inflation of the twenty-one. The end result looks fine. The years in between were not. Country by country, below.

Together again, at a higher level

By 2024 the boxes are short again, and they stay short. The countries of Europe have similar inflation again. But prices are now almost a third higher than in 2019.