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It was last Tuesday when the European Commission (EC) met in Brussels to talk about the 2014 autumn economic forecast. Among others, the discussion was mainly about the sluggish growth and inflation, the impact of geopolitical crises in the EU economy as well as the significant economic performance of Ireland. Wrong growth forecasts The EC stated […]
Last weekend the much anticipated G20 Finance Ministers’ and Central Bank Governors’ meeting happened in Cairns, Australia. It was very supportive and positive as far as the implementation of the necessary measures to boost the global economic growth in terms of GDP by an additional 1.8 per cent till 2018. This will be done through investments […]
It was only last Saturday when the European finance ministers gathered in Italy to decide how to bring back growth, a long-plaguing hoarse of the EU economy. They came to the conclusion that more investment programmes are needed to help the financing of infrastructure projects and development of the economy. Not a single project proposed […]
Last Wednesday, just two days before Eurozone’s finance ministers met for informal talks in Milan, the news had come in: France will not achieve a 3% EU budget deficit target this year. During a conference in Paris, the French finance minister Michel Sapin said that the country’s budget deficit will be around 4.4% of GDP in 2014 […]
Earier this week, on the 2nd of June, the European Commission (EC) decided to recommend to the EU Council of Finance Ministers to close the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) for six countries. The reason why Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands and Slovakia must exit EDP is because these countries managed to lower their […]
Despite an almost continuous but very moderate increase of government spending on education in absolute (euro) terms during the 2002-2012 decade the amount of public resources devoted to this end as a percentage of GPD either stagnated (2002-2007) or decreased (2009-2012), with the exception of a brief period between 2007-2009. During those three years educational […]
Today Eurostat, the EU statistical service, published its second and more accurate estimate for the euro area and the EU28 Gross National Product during the last quarter of 2013, and confirmed its flash estimate of 14 February when it had reported GDP increases of 0.3% and 0.4% respectively, in relation to the previous quarter. On […]
Yesterday, the European Commission after acknowledging that unemployment will continue ravaging more than half of Eurozone in the foreseeable future and predicting for this and next year a 0.1% ‘strengthening’ of the quite anemic growth rate, it found the courage to state that, “Recovery is gaining ground in Europe”. A lot of courage and probably […]
Tantalizingly slow proves the tempo of Eurozone’s economic resumption, if such a thing exists at all. According to the European Commission Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN), “in January the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) increased by 0.5 points in the euro area (to 100.91) and by 0.9 points in the EU (to 104.7)”. […]
This morning the German Federal Statistical Office issued a Press release revealing that the country grew by a mere 0.4% last year. This is almost half than the 0.7% GDP increase that Germany recorded in 2012. Along the same line of developments, Eurostat, the EU statistical office, published a Press release estimating that the Eurozone […]
Less than 24 hours after a widely advertised Press conference held by Barroso, Rehn and Andor, where all of them were talking about “strengthening the recovery”, recovery in Eurozone was reported as fading away, being one decimal point away from total freezing that is zero, or numerical death. It is as if reality wanted to […]
Bit by bit the much advertised resumption of economic activity in Eurozone fades away. The fall of unemployment rate by just one decimal point to 12.1% in June and the increase of GDP during the second quarter of this year by 0.3% fuelled overoptimistic estimates that Eurozone has definitively left behind the lowest part of […]
In July 2013, for a second month in a row, unemployment rates remained unchanged in both Eurozone and the EU28 at 12.1% and 11% respectively, according to a Eurostat Press release issued today. Eurostat is the EU statistical service. The same source notes that, “26.654 million men and women in the EU28, of whom 19.231 […]
Last Friday 23 August the European Commission released its flash estimate for the consumer confidence index of this month, finding it markedly improved in relation to July. The full Business and Consumer Survey with final data on August developments is due to be published on 30 August 2013. In detail the Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic […]
Early last Wednesday European Sting writer Elias Lacon stressed that “Eurozone banks are unable to support real economy’s dawning growth”. Hours later on the same day Eurostat, the EU statistical service, announced its flash estimate for the second quarter of 2013 euro area and EU27 growth and informed us that both those economic volumes recorded […]
Despite the ambivalent mood within and without Europe for the euro area’s economic prospects, some factual developments do not seem to be discouraging. For one thing the Commission gave yesterday the green light for Latvia to adopt the euro and join the Eurozone as from 1 January 2014. The solid decisiveness of this country during […]
One after the other the main indicators of Eurozone’s economic health are deteriorating slowly but surely. Even positive statistical findings, like the March Euro area surplus in international trade of goods, having reached a record €22.9 billion, if looked more closely reveal a deepening recession of the internal economy, while the rest of the world […]
Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, confirmed yesterday with its regular third estimate, that during the last quarter of 2012 the Gross Domestic Product fell by 0.6% in the Euro area and by 0.5% in the EU27, in comparison with the previous three-month period of the same year. Eurostat’s third regular GDP estimation […]
In the fourth year of the ongoing financial and real economy crisis, with government social spending severely cut and bank credit to households and businesses continuously shirking, tax increases remain the only sure thing in life. According to a study by two Eurostat authors, Elisabeth Joossens and Laura Wahrig, taxes in absolute terms surpassed the […]
According to the €-coin index the euro area growth remained negative for the 18th month in a row in March 2013, after the index turned negative in October 2011. The index measures the level of economic activity in the entire Eurozone and predicts GDP developments some months before the official data appear. The only positive […]
