According to the latest measure from LSA magazine’s NielsenIQ panellist, only in September did Belgium show a larger annual increase in the prices of its consumer products than France saw among seven Western European countries.
This was one of the arguments members of the government used the most as food prices explode across Europe at the start of 2023: France is one of the European countries where these prices are rising the slowest. This was already true just a few months ago, especially according to data from a measure of Western European inflation prepared by a NielsenIQ panelist for the specialist magazine LSA.
The tool compares the prices of fresh and self-serve consumer goods, food, health and beauty products in seven countries in Western Europe: Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and France. According to the figures contained in this barometer, the annual inflation rate reached less than 12% last January in France, which then ranked France in second place among the countries with the smallest increase in food prices, behind Belgium, which approached 11%.
Cumulative inflation approaching 18% since January 2022
Seven months later, the situation has completely reversed and France is now among the “pale hats” in Western Europe when it comes to food inflation. With the increase in consumer products reaching 9.5% in September, only its Belgian neighbor fared worse by remaining above the 10% mark.
The deterioration of the French situation becomes more evident when analyzing cumulative inflation since January 2022. This indicator showed 13% last February for France, a level very close to the best Portuguese student and 12.9%. Six months later, Portugal is still the leader (+12.4% between January 2022 and August 2023), while France is by far the country with the highest cumulative inflation rate over this period: approximately +18%.
“From the beginning of the second half of 2023, the inflation rate in Europe began to decline and then decline, with France being the exception of not following this trend until later,” he explains to LSA Emmanuel Fournet, France Customer Success Leader at NielsenIQ. Today, France is the country where prices have risen by the most since January 2022, although we must not forget that this comes after years of continuous deflation.
