Eurozone

The Balkan nation of 6.4 million people just completed its economic transformation and became the latest country to join the world's biggest currency zone

Europe's economy stagnated at the end of last year as former growth engine Germany floundered to the end of a second straight year of shrinking output, officials said Thursday. Gross domestic product was flat with a zero increase in the final quarter of 2024 in the 20-nation eurozone, EU statistics agency Eurostat said. The economy slowed from 0.4% growth in the third quarter as businesses were unsettled by possible trade disruptions under the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and as consumers remained cautious with spending after being stung by inflation. Germany, labouring under multiple headwinds including the loss of cheap energy from Russia, choking bureaucracy and political paralysis in Berlin, shrank by 0.2% in the fourth quarter. The German economy, Europe's largest, also shrank for all of 2024 by 0.2%, the second straight year of declining output. And the outlook for this year isn't much better. The government slashed its 2025 forecast on Wednesday to 0.3%

The ECB has been easing policy as inflation worries largely evaporate and the debate shifts to whether it is cutting rates fast enough to support an economy that is lagging global peers

However, for 2025, Fitch expects world growth to edge down to 2.4 per cent as US growth slows to a below-trend rate of 1.5 per cent and growth in the Eurozone picks up to 1.5 per cent

The Eurozone has fallen into recession, new data show, as its economy contracted over the winter, according to a media report

Nato's membership has increased from 12 to 30 countries through eight rounds of enlargement. The Republic of North Macedonia became the latest country to join Nato on March 27, 2020

MSCI's broadest index of world shares dipped 0.2%, hovering near 7-week lows. The STOXX 600 index slid 0.3% and Wall Street's S&P futures were down 0.6%

Inflation in the eurozone peaked at 10.6 per cent last October and has been slowly decreasing since then

Financial firms have led the charge in global issuance this year as a sector, with year-to-date sales topping $250 billion

Driven once more by soaring food and energy costs, consumer prices jumped 8.6 per cent from a year earlier in June - up from 8.1 per cent in May

Energy prices jumped 39.2%, highlighting how the war and the accompanying global energy crunch are making life more expensive for the eurozone's 343 million people

The ECB should end its stimulus bond-buying scheme "early in the third quarter", Lagarde said in a speech in Ljubljana

Euro zone economic sentiment dropped more than expected last month

This is the highest since records began in 1997

Consumer prices rose 4.1 per cent in October, compared with the median of economist estimates at 3.7 per cent

Eurozone inflation accelerated to 3.4 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) in September, reaching a 13-year high, according to a flash estimate published on Friday by Eurostat

The economy of the 19 countries that use the euro shrank by 11.8 per cent in the second quarter, the biggest decline on record and slightly less than originally reported, according to updated figures

Germany and the eurozone also face the possibility of disrupted trade with Britain, which left the EU on January 31

Two-year bond yields fell to 4 1/2-month lows at minus 0.796%

The services PMI edged down to 56.3 in May from 56.4 in April