Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — The Eurozone’s inflation rose to an all-time high of a record in May. This puts more pressure on Europe’s Central Bank to stop printing money and raise its interest rates above zero.

Eurostat preliminary figures showed that consumer price inflation increased to 8.1% over the twelve months ended May. This is an increase of 7.4% from April. Analysts had predicted a rate of 7.7%. 

Forecasts for 0.6% also predicted a 0.8% increase in monthly prices.

This development was expected after Monday’s events in Spain, Germany and Belgium. 

The ECB released the report before the market was affected by two top officials from the Bank of France, Francois Villeroy de Galhau (Bank of France Governor) and Ignazio Visco, his Italian counterpart. They indicated that they did not see any reason to increase the ECB’s July deposit rate by more then 25 basis points. This is the plan that President of the Central Bank and Chief Economist have laid out in the past week.  

“The latest inflation figures for May, in France and in the other countries, confirm the rise that we expected, and the necessity of a gradual but resolute monetary normalization,” Reuters quoted Villeroy as saying earlier.