In practice, of course, it is difficult to know whether increases in inflation are permanent or transitory, so policy makers have to judge whether to raise interest rates immediately, or to wait and see how the situation evolves.
However, these average figures mask the fact that, after several years of below par growth, a gradual recovery in activity has been underway since around the middle of last year. The main impetus to the euro area recovery has come from the improvement in the global economic performance, which, in turn, reflects a number of factors.