Price level for consumer goods and services, 2003

The survey is based on 285 clothing and footwear products for men, women and children. 31 European countries participated in the price collection, which took place within the framework of the European Comparison Programme (ECP) in November 2003. The price material has later been adjusted to annual average prices and weighted with expenditure values from each country's National Accounts. The results for Norway correspond to a large extent with the country's high general price level on goods and services for actual individual consumption.

Uniform price level in the EU

Sweden has the highest price level for clothing and footwear among the 25 EU countries, 14 per cent above the average, and closely followed by Italy, Finland and Denmark. The price level for clothing and footwear in the EU seen as a whole is quite uniform. More than half of the EU countries have a price level within a range of 10-12 per cent above or below the average. Between the extreme points in the group, there are nevertheless considerable differences. The relative price level in Sweden is, as an example, 46 per cent higher than in Poland.

The candidate countries Bulgaria and Romania stand out with a relative low price level, 42 and 45 per cent respectively below the EU25 average. This signifies that the price level for clothing and footwear in Norway is about 2,4 times as high as in Romania. The third candidate country, Turkey, comes out close to Poland's price level.

Not a "standard-of-living" indicator

The relative price level of a given country is not an indicator of that country's material standard of living, but rather expresses the price level consumers are facing if they conform to the average consumption pattern of that particular country.

Read more about this topic in Eurostat`s " Statistics in Focus ".