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Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said the 17 EU countries that use the euro saw their collective economic output increase by 0.3 percent in the April to June period from the previous quarter.
That’s the first quarterly growth since the eurozone slipped into recession in the last three months of 2011. The ensuing recession of six quarters was the longest since the euro currency was launched in 1999.
The improvement made up for the previous quarter’s equivalent decline and was moderately better than the 0.2 percent anticipated in the markets. Growth, however anemic, had been predicted by many economists following an easing in market concerns about Europe’s debt crisis in the past year and record low interest rates from the European Central Bank.
The eurozone’s growth, which translates to an annualized rate of about 1.3 percent, is still well below the 1.8 percent the United States enjoyed during the second quarter. The wider 27-country EU, which includes non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland, also emerged from its own, milder recession, and like the eurozone is also growing at an annualized rate of around 1.3 percent.
Growth in Europe provides a boon to the global economy. The EU, which now totals 28 following Croatia’s accession in July, has a population of around 550 million and its annual gross domestic product stands at around $17.3 trillion — both more than the United States, which has GDP of $16.6 billion for 315 million people.
Growth in Europe provides a boon to the global economy. The EU, which now totals 28 following Croatia’s accession in July, has a population of around 550 million and its annual gross domestic product stands at around $17.3 trillion — both more than the United States, which has GDP of $16.6 billion for 315 million people.
The EU’s recovery marks the first time since a brief period in 2011 that the four major pillars of the world economy — the United States, China, Japan and Europe — are growing at the same time.
The figures will be greeted with a sigh of relief by Europe’s policymakers, who have spent nearly four years grappling with a debt crisis that has threatened the very future of the euro. But they were not ready to declare victory, aware that this is only the start of what is expected to be a slow and uneven recovery.
“This slightly more positive data is welcome — but there is no room for any complacency whatsoever,” Olli Rehn, the EU’s top monetary official, said in his blog after the release of the figures. “I hope there will be no premature, self-congratulatory statements suggesting ‘the crisis is over.’”
The improvement was largely because of solid growth of 0.7 percent in Germany and a surprisingly strong 0.5 percent bounce-back in France following two quarters of negative growth.
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