Fixed Income Blog: EUR HICP market preview

Research evidence excerpt

Fixed Income Blog: EUR HICP market preview

Deutsche Bank

Research

Rates Date

Fixed Income Blog 28 May 2026

EUR HICP market preview

Markus Heider We expect May HICP ex-tobacco at 3.21% y/y, slightly below market fixings. The Macro Strategist

expected pickup from April is mainly driven by a rebound in holiday-related services +44-20-754-52167

prices.

Gabriele Cozzi

Looking further ahead, market pricing remains slightly above our forecasts for 2026, Strategist

with HICPxT accelerating to ~3.5-3.6% over the coming months/quarters, before +44-20-754-17714

falling back to ~2.3%/2.4% in H2 2027.

EUR HICP valuations have eased somewhat from the highs reached at the end of

April, alongside some moderation in energy market pricing, but remain materially

above end-February levels. We continue to see scope for further widening in 2y1y

US CPI-HICP, though upside from current levels looks more limited and a less

dovish Fed is a potential headwind. Our forecasts still point to greater upside in CPI

than in HICP, while macro risks remain skewed in favour of relatively higher US

inflation. Finally, an Iran conflict de-escalation would also support the widener.

EUR HICP forecasts

We expect next week’s euro-area May HICP (ex-tobacco) release to come in at

3.24% (3.21%) year-on-year, which would be ~20bp above April and more than

1.3pp above February. This is slightly below market pricing, with the Bloomberg

consensus not yet available at the time of writing. The expected pickup is mainly

driven by a rebound in holiday-related services prices.

Energy inflation is also forecast to have accelerated, though this is due to a base

effect. On a month-on-month basis, HICP energy may have fallen slightly (by

~0.4%), which would mark the first monthly decline since December last year

(Figure 1).