If you’re interested — and I know most of you are(n’t) — inflation in Europe warmed up for a third month in December, according to preliminary estimates released on Tuesday.

I realize this isn’t top-of-mind for most investors, but it bears mentioning in the context of an uneven inflation topography — and commensurately varied monetary policy outlooks — across developed economies.

Headline price growth ran 2.4% last month, Eurostat said. That was the warmest since July.

As the figure shows, December marked the third consecutive monthly increase.

The core measure remained parked at an annoying, but arguably tolerable, 2.7%, which is about like your HVAC system maintaining 77 in the summer: It’ll work, but it’ll be uncomfortable.

Recall that the headline measure actually slipped below the ECB’s target in September, when overall, bloc-wide price growth ran just 1.7% YoY. A pick-up into year-end 2024 was widely expected and Tuesday’s headline print was in-line with estimates.

And yet, the latest read on the ECB’s monthly household survey of inflation expectations showed consumers expected annual price growth of 2.4% at the three-year point, a four-month high and probably too high for the central bank’s liking, notwithstanding Europe’s pre-pandemic struggles to shake comparisons to Japan.

As the figure shows, services inflation in Europe is still running at 4%, where it’s been stuck for over a year. The high was 5.6% in July of 2023.

“Services inflation remains a concern,” ING’s Peter Vanden Houte said Tuesday, noting that PMIs and the European Commission’s sentiment gauge both indicate price pressures are still percolating in the services sector, “due to still-strong wage increases and higher price setting.”

As for headline inflation, ING doubts the ECB’s contention that overall annual price growth will decelerate anew in Q1. Policymakers are counting on “negative energy inflation [but] given current trends, that seems optimistic,” the bank went on.

For now, though, the ECB won’t see cause for alarm, and it’s reasonable to expect additional rate cuts. After all, the European economy isn’t exactly famous for vigor. The bloc always has one foot in a recession and the other on a banana peel.