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Price and Cost Competitiveness - data section

Price and Cost Competitiveness

This report  presents recent changes in the nominal and real effective exchange rates of the euro area, of the 27 individual EU Member States and several non-EU countries

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Its series of quarterly reports provide data on price and cost competitiveness in the euro area and the individual Member States of the European Union. 

Part 1 reports on international and intra-EU price and cost competitiveness.

Part 2 provides data for the euro area and for each EU Member State, as well as for the United States and Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Russia, China, Hong Kong and Korea. Aggregate measures for the European Union are presented as well. 

The nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) (or, equivalently, the “trade-weighted currency index”) tracks changes in the value of a given country’s currency relative to the currencies of its principal trading partners.

It is calculated as a weighted average of the bilateral exchange rates with those currencies. In the report, five alternative groups of competitor countries are considered: 

  • a broad group of 41 countries (broad group),
  • a group of 36 industrial countries (IC36),
  • a group of 24 industrial countries (IC24),
  • the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) and the euro-area countries (EA).

    Changes in cost and price competitiveness depend not only on exchange rate movements but also on cost and price trends. 

    The real effective exchange rate (REER) (or, equivalently, the “relative price and cost indicators”) aims to assess a country’s (or currency area’s) price or cost competitiveness relative to its principal competitors in international markets. It corresponds to the NEER deflated by selected relative price or cost deflators. 

    Deflators used in DG ECFIN reports are consumer price indices (CPI and HICP where available), the GDP deflator, the price deflator of exports of goods and services, and unit labour costs in the economy as a whole and in the manufacturing sector.

    Double export weights are used to calculate NEERs and REERs, reflecting not only competition in the home markets of the various competitors, but also competition in export markets elsewhere.

    You can download standard statistics. Differently defined nominal and real exchange rates are available upon request.

    For details on the methodology, you may wish to consult the Technical Annexen .

    All reports on price and cost competitiveness including the statistics for downloading are available here: 1999-2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.