"Debasement" once meant mixing cheap metal into gold coins. The modern version is quieter: the supply of money grows faster than the goods and services it can buy, and each unit buys a little less over time.
How to see it
Accumulated inflation. A single year of 2-3% inflation sounds small, but it compounds. Year after year it adds up to a large fall in what a euro buys — the euro page shows the cumulative figure, not just the annual rate.
Money supply. The broad money measure, M3, tends to grow steadily and at times sharply. When money grows much faster than the real economy, prices tend to follow.
The ECB balance sheet. Large-scale asset purchases expanded the central bank's balance sheet enormously after 2015 and again in 2020.
Why it matters
Savers and wage earners hold their wealth in euros. If prices rise faster than wages and interest, real purchasing power falls — even when the headline economy looks stable. This is not a forecast; it is arithmetic you can read directly from the inflation, money-supply and exchange-rate series on this site.
The figures here are official ECB and Eurostat data. We present them and let you draw conclusions.