Category Archives: Euro

Eurozone sinks into recession as cost of living crisis takes toll

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GDP shrank 0.1% in first quarter of 2023 and final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates

The eurozone slipped into recession in the first three months of the year, after official figures were revised to show the bloc’s economy shrank as the rising cost of living weighed on consumer spending.

Figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, showed gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.1% in the first quarter of 2023 and the final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates. A technical recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

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Why is the euro doing so badly against the dollar?

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Analysis: Investors often turn to US currency in times of uncertainty and there are plenty of reasons for them to be jittery

It is two decades since the euro was last trading below $1.00 (£0.84) against the US dollar. Now the single currency is once again teetering on the brink of parity.

There are a host of reasons why, although the prompt for the most recent slide in the currency has been the fear Europe faces an energy crunch this winter.

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Euro a whisker from dollar parity; Heathrow caps passenger numbers amid travel disruption – as it happened

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Euro slides to a 20-year low of $1.0001 on anxiety that Europe will fall into recession, as Heathrow introduces limit on summer holiday passengers

The euro is teetering ever closer to parity with the dollar.

It’s now trading at just $1.0005, on concerns that the shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline for maintenance could become permanent.

“While we believe that a cessation of Russian gas supply to Europe is a real possibility, one that would cause a Eurozone-wide recession with three consecutive quarters of economic contraction, there are also good reasons to assume that gas supplies will resume after the maintenance.”

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European stock markets tumble on rising fears of recession

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Euro slumps to 20-year low against US dollar as jump in natural gas prices intensifies economic strain

Rising worries about a European recession hit stock markets on Tuesday as the euro slumped to a two-decade low and the pound fell to its lowest since the start of the pandemic.

Shares tumbled in London and across Europe as a jump in natural gas prices intensified the strain on the European economy.

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Russian central bank buys up roubles to avert stock market collapse

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Bank scrambles to prevent invasion of Ukraine sending Russia’s financial system into meltdown as currency hits all-time low

The Russian central bank has purchased millions of roubles to prevent the collapse of the Moscow stock exchange and prop up the currency after it plunged to an all-time low of 89.60 against the dollar.

In a scramble to prevent the invasion of Ukraine pushing Russia’s financial system into meltdown, officials in Moscow closed the stock exchange while the Bank of Russia mounted a rescue operation to put a floor under the skidding rouble.

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Hope and fear in EU as hardliner tipped to be German finance minister

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Prospect of the FDP’s Christian Lindner taking charge has ‘half of Europe quaking in its boots’

Germany’s biggest neighbours are watching the formation of the country’s new government with a mixture of hope and fear, amid concerns that a fiscal hardliner hotly tipped to become the next finance minister could drag the continent back to the frosty standoffs of the eurozone crisis.

The Social Democratic party (SPD), the German Greens and the Free Democratic party (FDP) were expected to inch further towards a “traffic light” power-sharing deal on Friday, with formal coalition talks likely to start next week.

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Moving on: why the EU is not missing Britain that much

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On the 5th anniversary of Brexit, commentators reflect on the EU’s success at rallying together after Britain’s exit

On the night of 23 June 2016 a storm broke out over Brussels. Rain poured, thunder rolled and lightning flashed over the headquarters of the European Union’s institutions.

Then in the small hours came a political thunderbolt almost no one had forecast: the UK had voted to leave the union. Five years on, the Brexit tempest has subsided – in Brussels, if not in London.

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Sterling reaches $1.39 in best performance for three years

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FTSE 100 posts biggest daily gain for over a month as investors buoyed up by vaccine and US economy hopes

The pound has hit its highest level against the dollar for almost three years as global markets were buoyed up by hopes for a faster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Sterling rose by 0.5% to hit a 33-month high against the dollar on Monday, trading above $1.39 on the global currency markets for the first time since 2018, while also rising to a nine-month high against the euro of almost €1.15.

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Mario Draghi sworn in as prime minister of Italy

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Former European Central Bank chief to lead unity government as it tackles Covid and economic slump

The former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has been sworn in as Italy’s prime minister at the head of a unity government called on to confront the coronavirus crisis and economic slump.

Draghi, a respected figure at home and internationally, managed to convince almost all of the country’s main parties to support his government, with leaders from the far-right League and populist Five Star Movement (M5S) adopting more moderate, pro-European tones in recent days.

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Enter the Draghi: can ‘Super Mario’ save Italy as he did the euro?

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Called on to lead Italy’s government in crisis, the former central banker will need all the skills he honed saving the European currency

“Whatever it takes.” Three simple words that tamed the financial markets, saved the euro from possible collapse and turned Mario Draghi from an Italian technocrat into the central banker of his generation.

And an obvious choice to head a new coalition government in Rome at a time when the country is facing the triple whammy of Covid-19, economic collapse and political chaos.

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Margaret Thatcher said plan for the euro was ‘a rush of blood’, archives reveal

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The then British PM told her Irish counterpart that the bureaucracy in Brussels was a ‘politburo’ and was tying the UK up in regulations, papers show

Margaret Thatcher branded the European commission’s plans for a single currency as a “rush of blood to the head”, according to 30-year-old documents released from the Irish government archives.

In an echo of the divisive political debate that ultimately led to Brexit, the then British prime minister hit out at the “politburo” in Brussels and vowed not to be dictated to, during talks with her then Irish counterpart.

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Forget doom-laden headlines, the dollar has not gone into terminal decline | Barry Eichengreen

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Too much is being read into the greenback’s recent weakening against the euro

The dollar is in freefall! The global greenback is doomed! screamed recent headlines. Actually, such sensational headlines are “too sensational”, to echo that noted authority on currencies, Miss Prism, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

The dollar’s fall in July to a two-year low against the euro was the immediate impetus for these stories. In fact, the dollar’s recent slide is one in a series of readily explicable fluctuations. When the Covid-19 pandemic went global in March, the dollar strengthened on the back of safe-haven flows into US Treasuries, as it does at the start of every crisis. By May, the Federal Reserve, acting as global lender of last resort, had accommodated this mad scramble for dollars by pouring buckets of liquidity into financial markets and the greenback gave back its early gains.

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Eurozone downturn and US jobless surge hit markets – business live

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The euro area is suffering its worst contraction ever, as the French economy suffers its biggest plunge since the second world war

Britain’s FTSE 100 has just posted its worst day in a month, at the end of its best month in two years.

The blue-chip index has closed down 214 points at 5901, a drop of 3.5%. That wipes out yesterday’s rally, and half of Wednesday’s gains too!

Related: Shell cuts dividend for first time since 1945 amid oil price collapse

Shares in Zoom have dropped over 6% today, after the video-conferencing services admitted it wasn’t quite as popular as thought...

Zoom had initially said it had 300 million daily users, following the surge in remote working. But, it actually has 300 million daily meeting participants.

Zoom shares dropped more than 7% after the company walked back on claims it has 300 million daily active users. $ZM actually reached 300m daily participants, the difference being that meeting participants can be counted more than once.https://t.co/UIVYBP9sqt

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EU strikes €500bn relief deal for countries hit hardest by pandemic

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Compromise reached after Netherlands relents on ‘economic surveillance’ of beneficiary nations

A messy compromise to unlock €500bn (£438bn) of EU support for countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic has been struck after Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, warned that the existence of the bloc was at stake.

EU finance ministers on a video conference call struck a deal late on Thursday after the Netherlands shifted on a demand for “economic surveillance” of countries benefiting from €240bn of credit lines via the European stability mechanism, a bailout fund for struggling member states.

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Greece feeds economic recovery with tax law to lure investors

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Mitsotakis government seeks foreign capital from new residents in prosperity drive

Not so long ago the idea of Greece announcing tax relief measures to entice the global rich would have been regarded as a joke. With the EU’s weakest economy, and a leftist government in power, the world’s wealthy were keen to keep their distance.

But in a marked departure of policy, the centre-right administration led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis has offered an array of incentives to attract the rich.

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German recession fears rise as industrial output tumbles – business live

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Rolling coverage of business, economics and markets as factories in Europe’s largest economy stutter

Eurozone growth came in unchanged on its third estimate: 0.2% growth in the second quarter of the year.

A minor beat on the headline year-on-year growth rate, remaining at 1.2% against 1.1% expectations, but otherwise no shocks.

Labour has confirmed that it will not vote for an election on Monday even if a bill intended to stop a no-deal Brexit passes before then.

If we vote to have a general election, then no matter what it is that Boris Johnson promises, it is up to him to advise the Queen when the general election should be. And given that he has shown himself to be a manifest liar, and someone who has said that he will die in a ditch rather than stop no deal, and indeed his adviser, [Dominic] Cummings, has been swearing and shouting at MPs saying they are leaving on 31 [October] no matter what, our first priority has to be that we must stop no deal and we must make sure that that is going to happen.

Related: Brexit: Labour confirms it will not vote on Monday for early election - live news

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Riven with tensions, Europe is in for a stormy and fractious autumn

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As the bloc struggles to agree its future strategy, leaders remain unelected, and its budget and emissions targets are up in the air

Angela Merkel has the shakes. Emmanuel Macron has the collywobbles. And still Europe has no idea who will be in charge as it contemplates a stormy autumn strewn with political booby traps. In Britain, the Brexit deadline of 31 October is the only date that matters. But the EU, fragmented, disputatious and wounded to an extent unusual even by its fractious standards, is taking one day at a time.

Sunday’s special summit is a case in point. It was convened by an exasperated Donald Tusk, the outgoing European council president, after this month’s regular heads-of-government meeting failed to agree on his successor or who will fill other key posts, including European commission president and president of the European central bank. Now they are having another try.

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