European Selling Price Expectations (Sep) 20.3 (Prev. 16.9)

Selling price expectations from the European Commission's business and consumer survey are a second-tier input, but a step-up of this size stands out against the disinflation narrative that has dominated the region's data. The series sits upstream of official inflation prints: episodes where firms' pricing intentions have firmed in this survey have historically preceded stickier services and core readings, while episodes where they have collapsed have reliably flagged the opposite. The distinction worth drawing is whether the rise is concentrated in industry, where energy and input costs pass through quickly, or in services, where wage-driven pricing has been the slower-moving concern. A single monthly move in a survey measure is noisy on its own; the pattern that has mattered in the past is a sustained turn corroborated by the other pricing components and by wage data. Follow-ons are the accompanying inflation expectations release from the same survey and how the print is read against the policy bias of the region's central bank, since survey-based pricing signals have tended to feed the hawkish case at the margin.