Inflation for consumers in UK?

I would agree with you. The Euro has been a good excuse for retailers to round prices up. Here in the UK the supermarkets have been locked in price wars and I think that has helped too.

The CPI (normal goods and services. a predetermined basket of goods price change) inflation in the UK is around 2.2% and a RPI (Retail Price Index. Different basket of goods only) of 4%. "Inflation in the 15-member eurozone, which includes Germany, France and Italy, soared to 3.2 per cent in January, pushed up by global rises in food and fuel price" (The Age, Melbourne Australia), this includes countries such as Latvia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Hungary which skew the average by presenting well above the 'average' results.

These are effected by house prices, petrol prices (Governments like to keep this high as it creates tax revenue), retail sales (based on employment rates normally), interest rates (this is largely under EU control), employment (Govenments can create more employment by raising taxes and spending more of this money locally), imports (Governments can control this through taxation on imports), exports (Governments can inflate this as they do in the US), (some) impact from the US economy (greatly exposed in the banking sector in the UK through sub-prime exposures in the US) all of which effect the individual countries in the EU. The 'blame' of the EU on inflation can only really be related to the Euro-Dolar, Euro-GBP etc exchange rates (EU to EU 'imports' are easier and 'free') which will effect the price of your imported goods (or a small inflation caused when the country converted over to the Euro). The reverse of this also applies in that there is actually an advantage of having the Euro because you can import using a single currency which will not artificially inflate/deflate your purchasing power based on currency fluctuations. Countries such as the UK will suffer as imports and exports are paid for using some currency conversion (in most cases at least at a basic level) and they don't produce enough locally to supply the countries internal needs increasing the need for foreign supply.

In short this is by no means a complete and full answer but more of a guide to say, this is a very complex question but one thing is for sure, it is not 'the EU's' fault if Germany as an individual entity has high inflation, they could stop importing from non-EU or the Government could stop spending. If it is just a beat up by tabloid newspapers, the EU inflation (average across all the EU countries) is high but perhaps Germany's is in fact not that bad on its own.

Hail Hitler