The Istat press release on July prices, read line by line
The final data published by the National Institute of Statistics say two things that appear contradictory: the national index rises by 0.3% in one month, while the harmonised index falls by 1.0%. The difference lies in the summer sales, and the document states this explicitly.
Today’s document is the Istat press release on consumer prices, final data for July 2026: a public text, downloadable in full as a PDF, which consolidates the preliminary estimates released at the end of July.
What it says
The national consumer price index for the whole community, the NIC, recorded a change of +0.3% in July 2026 compared with the previous month and +2.9% year on year, slowing from +3.0% in June.
The European harmonised index, the IPCA, moved in the opposite direction on the month: -1.0%. On an annual basis it reaches the same result as the NIC, +2.9%. The press release attributes the monthly drop in the harmonised index to the summer sales.
So-called core inflation, calculated net of energy and fresh food, remains stable at +1.6%. The document finally reports the acquired inflation for 2026: +2.7% for the general index, +1.8% for the core component.
| Measure | July 2026 |
|---|---|
| NIC, monthly change | +0.3% |
| NIC, annual change | +2.9% (from +3.0%) |
| IPCA, monthly change | −1.0% |
| IPCA, annual change | +2.9% |
| Core inflation | +1.6%, stable |
| Acquired inflation 2026 | +2.7% (core: +1.8%) |
The limits the document declares
The first limit is declared by the press release itself, and it is the one that explains the divergence between the two indices: the harmonised index’s negative monthly change is attributed to the summer sales. Anyone comparing the IPCA’s -1.0% with the NIC’s +0.3% without taking this into account reads two snapshots of different phenomena and draws from them a contradiction that does not exist.
The second limit is temporal: this is July data. The document contains no information about August, nor about the subsequent trend of energy prices.
The third concerns the nature of the measures. Core inflation excludes by construction the most volatile items — energy and fresh food — and therefore does not describe households’ actual spending, but the most stable part of prices. Acquired inflation is a measure referring to the whole of 2026 built on the months already recorded: it is not a forecast by the institute for the year.
How the newspapers covered it
Coverage on August 31 did not concern this document but the following one. Giornale Partite IVA headlines on the resumption of price rises in August, based on the first readings of the preliminary Istat estimate, and places alongside it the forecast from the Parliamentary Budget Office: GDP growth confirmed at +0.9% in 2026, with the risk that rising prices will weaken household consumption.
In the shift from the document to the headline, three elements are lost. The first is that the preliminary estimate for August and the final data for July are two separate publications, and the former is provisional. The second is the stability of the core component at +1.6%: if the general index moves and the core does not, the push comes from the items excluded from the calculation, chiefly energy. The third is that on the month the harmonised index fell, for a seasonal reason declared by the institute. A similar reading of the July press release is offered by Format Research.
Why it matters
Italy’s +2.9% for July should be compared with the European figure: according to Eurostat’s flash estimate, annual inflation in the euro area in July 2026 was also 2.9%, up from 2.8% in June, with energy at 10.0% year on year. Italy was therefore moving in line with the area average, but in the opposite direction: slowing while the European aggregate rose. Verification of this gap will come with the publication of the European estimate for August, scheduled by Eurostat for today, September 1.
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