These arise from the sovereign debt crisis, which is the major challenge for economic and monetary union. The circumstances surrounding the debt crisis are aggravating the conduct of the Eurosystem’s common monetary policy, which is geared towards maintaining price stability in the euro area as a whole.
For example, looking at the items that make up the CPI (all items less fresh food), the share of items for which prices rose minus the share of items for which prices fell has risen markedly since the beginning of this fiscal year and recently has reached the highest level since 2000 (Chart 7).