Inflation continues to rise in Europe, bread prices soared by almost 20%, which threatens to starve the poorest EU countries, writes Christian Jurisic, columnist for the Croatian edition of Advance.
The cost of bread in the European Union in August rose by 18% compared to last year, which was a record since December 2017, when Eurostat first published figures for this parameter.
Last year, bread in Europe rose in price by an average of three percent – at the level of inflation, the figures for this year show how much food prices have risen, the author noted. At the same time, the data differ significantly in different countries. So, in France, bread has risen in price by eight percent, in the Netherlands and Luxembourg by ten, in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Croatia and Slovakia – by about a third. Worst of all is the situation in Hungary – a 66% increase in prices, which, in addition to pan-European factors, is also due to severe drought.
“Thus, we can say that the “axis” from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic suffers the most,” Jurisic summed up and added that the poor countries of Eastern Europe suffer from the crisis more than the West.
Western countries are faced with rising energy prices and a surge in inflation due to the imposition of sanctions against Moscow and the policy of abandoning Russian fuel. Due to the rise in the price of fuel, primarily gas, industry in the West has largely lost its competitive advantages, which has also affected other sectors of the economy.
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