Stubborn eurozone price rises overshadowed stronger growth figures on Monday in a setback for Christine Lagarde’s battle to tame inflation.

While headline inflation eased from 5.5pc in June to 5.3pc in the year to July, core inflation, which strips out volatile movements in energy and food, remained stuck at 5.5pc. This defied expectations for a fall.

Claus Vistesen, chief European economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, warned that “worryingly sticky” services inflation was likely to remain high during the busy summer tourist season, piling pressure on the European Central Bank to take interest rates to a fresh record.

Speaking before the figures were released, Ms Lagarde, the ECB’s president, warned that any pause on rates in September would not be “definitive”.

It came as separate figures published by Eurostat showed the single currency area grew 0.3pc in the three months to June.

This was slightly higher than the expected increase of 0.2pc and follows six months of near-stagnation.

Despite the setback on prices, headline eurozone inflation has halved from a peak of 10.6pc last Autumn.

UK inflation remains much higher, at 7.9pc in May compared with a peak of 11.1pc, suggesting Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, will be forced to keep raising interest rates to keep a lid on price rises.