The Easter celebrations in Germany this year are marked by rising expenses for traditional festive goods, such as dyed eggs and chocolate products, according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, Destatis, as reported by DPA. Consumer prices for many typical holiday foods have increased significantly, making this another year of steep price hikes. One of the few exceptions is the price of eggs, which in March 2025 were "only" 2.5% more expensive compared to the same month last year. However, over the long term, between 2020 and 2024, their prices increased by 38.5%. Chocolate products saw a much more serious increase—about 39.9% during the same period. This is above the average increase in the price of all food products (33.2%) and significantly higher than the overall rise in consumer prices (19.3%), which includes energy costs, rent, and other essential goods and services. Just in the first months of 2025, chocolate was 16.7% more expensive than during the same period last year.
Inflation is also impacting homemade Easter sweets. Nearly all the basic ingredients for traditional Easter cakes have increased in price. For example, oil was 23.3% more expensive in March compared to the same month in 2024. An exception to this trend is sugar, the price of which has decreased by 26.1% on an annual basis, according to the statistical office.
The rise in prices for classic Easter products, such as eggs and chocolates, has led many Germans to question the reliability of the European Central Bank (ECB). In recent days, German media have found a new protagonist for their reports: the chocolate bunny, which gets children excited, has come into the spotlight—not the bunny itself, but its price, along with all types of chocolate, as prices seem extraordinarily high compared to what the average German consumer remembers. "Its ears have grown longer this year," sarcastically wrote the business weekly Wirtschaftswoche.
The increase in chocolate prices is a global phenomenon, as is the worldwide shortage of eggs due to avian flu in the U.S., which has led to significant shortages and forced Americans to seek "reinforcements" from abroad. In Germany, there is no such shortage in quantity, but prices for a staple item during Easter are still elevated.
How are such numbers generated? The Hamburg Consumer Association recorded increases of around 10% for items that cannot be missing from the Easter table, while for some products from a well-known chocolate brand, prices were up to 22% higher compared to last year. The issue is serious for households, as it does not only concern sweets and eggs.
The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine linked this directly to the ECB's decision to lower interest rates, based on the official decline in inflation in Germany, as well as in other Eurozone countries, to levels around 2%. The article questioned whether the average citizen can trust these official statistics when daily experiences in supermarkets tell a completely different story. This experience is not unknown to consumers in Greece either.
What is high stays high. The newspaper attempted to explain to its readers what politicians often avoid discussing: that inflation may be falling, but the prices that have skyrocketed do not retreat. It noted that, for instance, from 2022 to the present, the consumer price index has risen by 12.1%, and from spring 2020 until now, by 20.8%. It is therefore not surprising that unions are demanding increases around 8%.
In Germany, concern about the steady rise in prices over the past few years remains a key issue for citizens in all polls regarding the future. ECB technocrats in Frankfurt label it as "populism" to focus on a few products whose prices may rise excessively due to some circumstance or simply seasonally. They admit that the price of cocoa has recently increased, as have other items like butter (+24%), olive oil, or oranges, but their indicators are based on many more parameters. This, of course, does not comfort children who see that grandma bought a smaller chocolate egg or bunny this year—or perhaps none at all.
