€1 in 2020 is worth €0.70 in 1999

Buying power of €1 in 1999

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for €1 in 1999 (price index tracking began in 1996).

For example, if you started with €1, you would need to end with €0.70 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When €1 is equivalent to €0.70 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single Euro euro decreases over time. In other words, a euro will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a euro over time. By calculating the value in 1999 dollars, the chart below shows how €1 is worth less over 21 years.

According to the European Central Bank, each of these EUR amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1999 amounts in 2020 euros, based on the -30.03% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for €1, 1999 to 2020

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1999 and 2020:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The Euro CPI was 106.2008333 in the year 2020 and 74.30416667 in 1999:

€1 in 2020 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as €0.70 in 1999.

To get the total inflation rate for the 21 years between 1999 and 2020, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

Raw data for these calculations comes from the European Commission and the European Central Bank's Harmonized Index of Consumer prices (HICP), which is computed based on the reported consumer price indices in member countries of the European Union.

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