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Economy and Finance

What is the price and cost competitiveness report?

These quarterly reports provide data on price and cost competitiveness in the euro area and the individual Member States of the EU.

Reports

The reports present recent changes in the nominal and real effective exchange rates of the euro area, of the individual EU Member States and several non-EU countries. The reports also includes data for the United States and Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Russia, China, Brazil, Hong Kong and Korea. Aggregate measures for the European Union and the euro area are presented as well.

Download data.

The nominal effective exchange rate (NEER)

The NEER or 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, four alternative groups of competitor countries are considered:

  • a broad group of 42 countries (broad group)
  • a group of 37 industrial countries (IC37)
  • the 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)

The REER or 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 the 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.

Related documents

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

Price and Cost Competitiveness - Data Section

Please consult the reference metadata on methodology and quality :

  • 1 JUNE 2022
Reference metadata on methodology and quality for REER - June 2022

For details on the methodology, you may wish to consult the technical annex.

  • 1 JUNE 2021
Technical Annex

You may also wish to consult the report on quality, sources and methods used for the compilation of Effective Exchange Rates.

  • 19 NOVEMBER 2021
Report on quality, sources and methods

A comparison of consumer price deflated REER (monthly, 1999-2014) produced by five international EER data compilers can be found here.

  • 15 JULY 2015
Comparison of Consumer Price deflated REER

Archived reports on price and cost competitiveness