The European Commission has cut its growth forecast for the Eurozone this year, after admitting the sclerotic German economy is “significantly weaker” than previously thought – they expect it to shrink by 0.4% this year – and its “big deterioration” will be a drag anchor on Europe. Output across the Eurozone is now predicted to rise by 0.8% this year, with an earlier projection expecting 1.1% growth. Next year’s growth outlook was cut to 1.3%…
The growth forecasts for the top 6 European economies are:
Spain 2.2%
France 1.0%
Italy 0.9%
Netherlands 0.5%
Poland 0.5%
Germany -0.4%
Germany have at least announced a €32 billion tax-cutting growth plan to fix this. No such luck on our own shores: Jeremy Hunt has just told Bloomberg he doesn’t have much headroom in the Autumn Statement…
First Germany, now the Netherlands. The Eurozone’s fifth largest economy unexpectedly fell into recession today, shrinking 0.3% on a quarterly basis in Q2. It follows a 0.4% contraction from January to March. Consumer spending fell 1.6%. Meanwhile the UK economy grew by 0.2%…
The eurozone tipped into recession at the start of the year, with a contraction of 0.1% in the first three months of 2023. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, shrank by 0.3%. Eurostat initially forecast 0.1% growth over this period – it turns out they were too ambitious. The UK, meanwhile, actually did grow by 0.1% in the first quarter…
Three smug eurocrats have been gloating about Brexit and the Tory leadership race in a Sky News segment which Sky have inexplicably been playing on repeat all day. Not exactly news.
They won’t be as smug when they see the latest Eurozone industrial figures. Industrial production fell 0.5% in April on top of a 0.4% drop in March. Dragging every other country down was Germany which saw its industrial production plummet by 2.3% – almost five times faster than the Eurozone as a whole. Brussels’ Brexit bluster is going to start looking pretty hollow if the Eurozone’s economic woes keep getting worse like this…
The latest manufacturing PMI figures are out and it’s more grim reading for Merkel and Macron with the Eurozone’s index falling to 47.5 in March – firmly in contraction territory and the lowest level since April 2013. Germany is rapidly becoming the sick man of Europe, its reading of 44.1 is the worst since the crisis days of 2012…
Meanwhile the UK’s own manufacturing index has surged to a 14-month high of 55.1, coming in far ahead of the forecast of 51.2. The UK could even consider giving the EU a trade deal, if they ask nicely…
The Eurozone’s economic slide continues with the latest manufacturing index figures showing the steepest contraction in manufacturing since June 2013. February’s PMI figures showed a fall to 49.3 (anything below 50 indicates contraction), the lowest level since June 2013, with new orders at their lowest since April 2013 and export orders at their lowest level in over six years. Germany’s performance was particularly poor on 47.6 – the wurst in 74 months…
The bottom line is that the EU increasingly cannot afford to have no deal. Eurocrats are panicking about legal chaos if the UK’s membership is extended beyond the European Parliament elections, the UK’s seats have already been allocated to other countries so the EU isn’t just braced for lawsuits from the UK, it may also have to face several from the likes of the German Vegetarians Party. The only thing still allowing the EU to stick to its intransigent position is the fact that UK Parliament is doing all their dirty work for them…
