The average retail price of a liter of extra virgin olive oil ranged from €10.36 ($14.10) to €2.69 ($3.66) across 19 European Union countries, according to data compiled by the EU’s statistical office.
The most expensive average was in the Czech Republic and the cheapest in the world’s biggest olive oil producer, Spain, though Eurostat noted the olive oil surveyed there also included other grades.
According to the updated “detailed average prices” project, published May 15, in 2012 the average cost of a liter of extra virgin olive oil for all 19 countries was €6.88 ($9.37) and the median €6.85 ($9.32).
Olive oil cheaper in Western Europe, Mediterranean basin
The lowest averages tended to be in the Mediterranean basin and Western Europe, and the highest on the other side of the continent. After Spain, the oil was cheapest in Turkey (€4.55), the Netherlands (€4.84), Cyprus (€4.96) and Italy (€5.00), while the next most expensive after the Czech Republic was Slovakia (€10.08), Slovenia (€9.11), Croatia (€8.50) and Poland (€8.41), though it was noted that quantities may have differed in the data used for the latter.
Prices lower than in 2008
Compared to a similar survey in 2008, and without adjusting for inflation, the 1L averages in 2012 were generally lower, with the biggest drop in Poland (-€3.06), followed by Turkey (-€1.01), the Czech Republic (-€0.96), Spain (-€0.73) and Greece (-€0.39).
Also monitoring coffee, cinema tickets
Eurostat said that among the 156 products surveyed in 2012 for the project, the average prices of a number of products were similar across Europe, one example being white sugar (1kg fine, granulated), which ranged from €1.46, in Cyprus, to €0.92, in Poland. A kilo of wheat flour ranged from €1.22, in Greece, to €0.46, in the Czech Republic, and a cup of coffee from €0.54 in Bulgaria to €3.29 in Switzerland.
The lowest average price of cinema tickets (one ticket, Saturday evening) was in Slovakia, €3.27, and the highest in Finland, €10.93, while the price of cigarettes (pack of 20, filter) went from €2.32 in Lithuania to average prices in Ireland and the United Kingdom above 9 €/pack.
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