Everyone has noticed it in the bank account. Money is running low. Prices are skyrocketing and filling the grocery coffers is getting harder.
This is confirmed by Eurostat, which has just announced that inflation increased by 10 percent during September, marking a new record. Just a year ago, inflation in September was 3.4 percent.
Again, energy prices, with an increase of 40 percent, are the main reason for the increase in the cost of living. Meanwhile, food, tobacco and alcohol increased by almost 12 percent.
Chief among the cocktail of factors driving up the cost of living are cuts in natural gas supplies from Russia and the struggle to secure supplies of crude as the global economy emerges from years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
European officials call Moscow’s gas cuts an energy blackmail aimed at dividing Western governments over sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.