The European Union's statistics agency Eurostat said Friday that the annual consumer price inflation rate was 1.5 percent, down from 2 percent in February. That puts it again below the European Central Bank's target of just below 2 percent, despite a huge effort by the ECB to stimulate consumer prices in Europe.
It was slower than 1.8 percent forecast by analysts surveyed by Factset, a data company.
Economists in powerful Germany had said two percent inflation in February meant that the ECB could pull back from a controversial stimulus program and raise interests.
But ECB head Mario Draghi argued for sticking to the policy of low rates and cash injections into the economy, unconvinced that higher inflation was here to stay.
Eurostat found that higher energy prices had less of an upward impact. Though energy costs were 7.3 percent higher in the year to March, the equivalent increase in February was a full two percentage points more.
Also the core rate, which strips out volatile items such as energy, was only 0.7 percent against 0.9 percent in February.
