Anyone who walked into a supermarket in Naples, or almost anywhere in southern Italy, in late October may have found the fruit aisle half empty. For roughly two weeks, lorry drivers angry about the price of diesel blocked roads and ports across Campania, Puglia and Calabria. Warehouses stopped loading, and shelves of meat, fresh milk, fruit and bottled water ran bare, in some small shops within a day.
Italy is an extreme case. It also hints at something broader. After a quiet year for grocery bills, the weekly shop is starting to cost more again across much of Europe.
Energy sets the pace
The main force behind the latest inflation figures is not food but fuel. Preliminary Eurostat data published on Wednesday show eurozone inflation reaching 4% in October, the highest in more than three years. Fuel, electricity and heating cost 20.8% more than a year earlier.
Food has so far risen far more slowly. Prices for food, alcohol and tobacco together were up 1.6% in the eurozone in October. For the EU as a whole, food and soft drinks were only 0.6% dearer in September, the latest month for which every member state has reported.
The split between processed and fresh
Beneath that calm surface, the picture is uneven. Processed food, alcohol and tobacco rose just 0.5% over the year. Unprocessed food, meaning items such as fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, climbed 4.6%, up from 2.7% in August.
The logic is easy to follow. Tractors run on diesel, greenhouses need heating, and nearly everything reaches the shelf by lorry. When those costs jump, fresh produce is especially exposed because it cannot sit in a warehouse for months waiting for conditions to improve. Nicola Nobile, chief Italy economist at Oxford Economics, noted that energy and food drove the latest increase while core inflation stayed broadly stable despite the ongoing energy shock.
How the big economies compare
Italy’s national statistics office, Istat, reports that unprocessed food cost 7.5% more in October than a year earlier, up from 5.5% in September. Its broader basket of food, household and personal care goods rose 2.5%, compared with 1.5% a month before.
France shows a similar divide. According to INSEE, food prices overall rose 1.2% in October, but fresh products were 8% dearer than a year earlier. That is slightly lower than the 9.5% recorded in September. In Germany, food prices rose by only 0.4%. Portugal saw unprocessed food up 3.7%, unchanged from September, and in Spain food prices kept rising in October but more slowly than a year earlier.
Winners and losers across the EU
The September data, which cover every EU country, show how differently households have been affected. Cyprus recorded the steepest annual rise in food and soft drinks at 4%. Spain followed at 2.7%, Romania at 2.6%, Malta at 2.5% and Portugal at 2.4%. Outside the bloc, Türkiye stands out, with food prices up 27.6% in a year.
In 14 of the EU’s 27 countries, food and soft drinks were actually cheaper than twelve months earlier. Sweden saw the sharpest fall, at 6.3%, after the government halved VAT on food from 12% to 6% on 1 April. The reduction is due to run until the end of 2027. Latvia, Hungary and Czechia also recorded declines of between 3.8% and 4.8%.
A long memory at the checkout
Small monthly rises land on top of very large earlier ones. Since September 2021, when energy prices began to surge, food in the EU has become about a third more expensive. In Hungary the increase exceeds half. Bulgaria, Estonia and Romania are just above 50%, while in Luxembourg, Sweden and France the rise is closer to a quarter.
That matters because several of the countries with the biggest cumulative increases are also those where food takes the largest share of household spending. A 2% rise at the till can therefore bite harder for a family in Bucharest or Sofia than the same rise would in Luxembourg.
What comes next
Economists do not expect relief soon. Pantheon Macroeconomics sees eurozone inflation peaking at 4.5% in January and expects the European Central Bank to raise interest rates in December. The ECB left rates unchanged at 2.5% at its most recent meeting last week.
The latest figures suggest food prices may be accelerating just as winter heating bills arrive. For shoppers in parts of southern Italy, the squeeze has already reached the shelves.
