The HICP was initially created for the assessment of price convergence in Stage Two of EMU and is largely harmonised across euro area countries. It scores particularly high in the above criteria. There is no controversy in that Eurostat provides a high quality price index at international standards.
Headline inflation versus core inflation The choice of the headline measure has the advantage of transparency: It provides the measure that most closely approximates the price of a representative basket of consumption goods and services purchased by euro area households.