Xinhua, Brussels :
As Europe struggles to cope with its sluggish growth, subdued inflation and double-digit unemployment in the aftermath of a far-reaching sovereign debt crisis, the uncertainties brought by Brexit and an ongoing unprecedented refugee crisis are doomed to add renewed pressure.
Experts warn that the prospects of Europe’s economy would continue to remain lackluster in the near future.
Official data showed that growth for Eurozone’s gross domestic product (GDP) saw a quarterly increase of merely 0.6 percent in the first three months this year and waned to only 0.3 percent in the second quarter.
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), has recently cut the economic outlook for the 19-country Eurozone, projecting growth of the single currency bloc not reaching more than 1.6 percent for this year, a notch below the earlier 1.7 percent estimate.
Inflation, a figure closely watched by the bloc’s central bank, turned out to be 0.2 percent in July, up from the 0.1 percent one month earlier, recording a rare positive reading this year when the Eurozone fell in deflation several times.
The European Central Bank (ECB) predicted that inflation would stand at just 0.2 percent in 2016 and still off the targeted “below, but close to 2 percent” goal in the next three years.
More of a worry is that the inflation rate for a dozen EU member states remained in negative territory in July, with the Czech Republic being the only one hitting a turning point from negative 0.1 percent in June to 0.5 percent last month, piling pressure for further action by European policymakers. Another nuisance for Europe has been the high jobless rate which so far saw limited progress and stayed in the double-digits. The latest data from Eurostat, the bloc’s statistic office, showed unemployment at 10.1 percent in the Eurozone in June, while Greece and Spain, where half of young job seekers failed to find work, registered the highest readings at nearly 20 percent.
As Europe struggles to cope with its sluggish growth, subdued inflation and double-digit unemployment in the aftermath of a far-reaching sovereign debt crisis, the uncertainties brought by Brexit and an ongoing unprecedented refugee crisis are doomed to add renewed pressure.
Experts warn that the prospects of Europe’s economy would continue to remain lackluster in the near future.
Official data showed that growth for Eurozone’s gross domestic product (GDP) saw a quarterly increase of merely 0.6 percent in the first three months this year and waned to only 0.3 percent in the second quarter.
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), has recently cut the economic outlook for the 19-country Eurozone, projecting growth of the single currency bloc not reaching more than 1.6 percent for this year, a notch below the earlier 1.7 percent estimate.
Inflation, a figure closely watched by the bloc’s central bank, turned out to be 0.2 percent in July, up from the 0.1 percent one month earlier, recording a rare positive reading this year when the Eurozone fell in deflation several times.
The European Central Bank (ECB) predicted that inflation would stand at just 0.2 percent in 2016 and still off the targeted “below, but close to 2 percent” goal in the next three years.
More of a worry is that the inflation rate for a dozen EU member states remained in negative territory in July, with the Czech Republic being the only one hitting a turning point from negative 0.1 percent in June to 0.5 percent last month, piling pressure for further action by European policymakers. Another nuisance for Europe has been the high jobless rate which so far saw limited progress and stayed in the double-digits. The latest data from Eurostat, the bloc’s statistic office, showed unemployment at 10.1 percent in the Eurozone in June, while Greece and Spain, where half of young job seekers failed to find work, registered the highest readings at nearly 20 percent.
