In an Economic Bulletin article, the European Central Bank analysed the January 2026 change to the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, which aligned the euro area inflation measure with the international COICOP 2018 standard through ECOICOP version 2, rebased the index from 2015 = 100 to 2025 = 100 and extended the euro area aggregate to include Bulgaria. The ECB said the new classification gives a clearer split between goods and services and better reflects current consumption patterns, while leaving headline HICP inflation unchanged and causing only minor changes to the main aggregates and most underlying inflation indicators. The reclassification moves separately invoiced delivery fees into services, creates distinct categories for delivery and courier services, lists repair, maintenance, rental and installation separately, shifts IT hardware and software to information and communication, separates insurance and financial services from other personal services and adds games of chance. Historical all-items HICP rates changed only marginally, with differences of up to 0.1 percentage points caused by rounding linked to the rebasing. At sub-component level, food saw the largest revisions because some chilled and frozen items moved from processed to unprocessed food, producing revisions of up to about 1.2 percentage points for unprocessed food and 0.3 percentage points for processed food, while energy, non-energy industrial goods and services were revised by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. Measures such as HICP excluding energy and food, HICP excluding energy, food, air travel-related items, clothing and footwear, and trimmed means changed by at most around 0.2 percentage points, while the weighted median moved by up to 0.4 percentage points. Persistent and Common Component of Inflation and domestic inflation were little changed, whereas larger revisions to Supercore mainly reflect a simultaneous methodology change that now identifies cyclical items using Phillips curve regressions with the unemployment gap rather than the earlier forecast-based output gap approach. The ECB noted that some minor corrections may still be made to historical series during 2026 and that revised methodologies for domestic inflation and Supercore will be published soon.
European Central Bank 2026-05-15
European Central Bank details January 2026 HICP classification change with unchanged headline inflation and minor revisions to underlying measures
The European Central Bank analysed the January 2026 changes to the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, which aligned the euro area measure with the COICOP 2018 standard via ECOICOP version 2, rebased the index to 2025 = 100 and extended the euro area aggregate to include Bulgaria. The ECB reported that the new classification refines the split between goods and services and better reflects consumption patterns, while leaving headline HICP inflation broadly unchanged and only marginally affecting main aggregates and most underlying indicators, with larger revisions to Supercore.