Eurozone?s Longest-Ever Recession Comes to an End

(LONDON) — The longest-ever recession to afflict the eurozone came to an end in the second quarter of the year, official figures confirmed Wednesday. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said the 17 European Union countries that use the euro saw their collective economic output grow 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 over Europe’s debt crisis over the past year and record low interest rates from the European Central Bank. (VIDEO: Why Germany Must Save The Euro to Save Itself) 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 due to 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. Aside from Europe’s top two economies, there were signs of stabilization elsewhere, notably in Portugal, which expanded by a surprising 1.1 percent. Spain and Italy saw the pace of their economic contractions slow. There was even evidence that the recession in Greece, the country at the

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