Filtered by Region: Europe Use setting Europe
In a relatively quiet week for euro-zone economists, the most important release was the final inflation data for June. Unusually, these were revised slightly from the flash release as core HICP inflation is now estimated to have edged up to 5.5% rather …
21st July 2023
Paying particular attention to pay growth Note: We’ll be discussing the UK inflation, growth and policy outlooks after the June CPI release on Wednesday 19th July. Register here to join that 20-minute online briefing. We know that the evolution of wage …
14th July 2023
More signs of economic weakness Activity data released this week brought further evidence that euro-zone GDP contracted in Q2. While industrial production edged up by 0.2% m/m in May, it is still set to have fallen in Q2 as a whole, barring an increase of …
Market-implied interest rate expectations have continued to rise this week as investors have concluded that in order to squeeze high inflation out of the system, the Bank of England will have to raise interest rates further, from 5.00% now to a peak of …
7th July 2023
Russian ruble depreciation gathering pace The depreciation of the Russian ruble gathered pace this week amid a continued squeeze on Russia’s trade surplus and growing capital outflows. A weaker currency will support the fiscal position, but at the same …
Weak activity data The latest data support our view that euro-zone GDP contracted in Q2, in contrast to the consensus view that it rose. In May, euro-zone retail sales were weak and industrial output in Germany edged down, while in June the euro-zone …
It’s been another tough week for the Bank of England. The week began with the Bank’s Chief Economist, Huw Pill, defending its inflation models in a letter to the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee and ended with Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member, …
30th June 2023
We are nudging up our peak ECB rate forecast in light of communications from ECB officials at Sintra and the latest economic data. We now see 25bp rate hikes in both July and September, taking the deposit rate to 4%. As a reminder, we were forecasting …
It’s been an extremely tough week for the Bank of England and its Governor, Andrew Bailey. Wednesday’s CPI release revealed the second shocking surge in core inflation in a row and appeared to confirm our view that the inflation problem is bigger in the …
23rd June 2023
A cut, a hold .... and an underwhelming hike The three central bank meetings that took place across the region this week all produced different outcomes, and policymakers’ communications suggest interest rates in these countries will continue to move in …
This week, we published our latest Europe Economic Outlook . Three key points are worth highlighting. First, the euro-zone economy is likely to remain in recession for the rest of 2023. Admittedly, this year’s fall in gas prices will support demand and …
PiS adding further fuel to the inflation fire The Polish government set out plans this week to increase the national minimum wage by around 20% again next year. With the labour market still very tight and further pre-election fiscal stimulus likely to be …
16th June 2023
Note: We’ll be discussing the UK’s economic, housing market and policy outlook in light of the BoE’s June rate decision in an online briefing on 22nd June at 10:00 EDT/15:00 BST . Register now . The title of last week’s UK Economics Weekly was “Why …
More ground to cover The message from the ECB yesterday was decidedly hawkish. The Bank raised rates and more or less promised another hike in July, while the substantial upward revision to its inflation forecasts implied that further tightening could …
Turkey embraces orthodoxy, but for how long? Optimism about a shift towards orthodox economic policymaking was at the heart of developments in Turkey this week amid the appointments of a new cabinet and central bank governor and a sharp fall in the lira. …
9th June 2023
Central Bank Drop-In (15th June): We’ll be discussing the Fed and ECB June decisions and previewing the Bank of England’s upcoming meeting in a 20-minute online briefing at 10:00 EDT/15:00 BST on Thursday . Register Now. We learnt this week that the …
Central Bank Drop-In (15 th June): We’ll be discussing the Fed and ECB June decisions and previewing the Bank of England’s upcoming meeting in a 20-minute online briefing at 10:00 EDT/15:00 BST on Thursday . Register Now. The OECD joined the ranks of the …
Core inflation on its way down? Data published this week showed that euro-zone core inflation fell for the second consecutive month in May. (You can read our response to the data here or watch our Drop-in on the outlook for inflation, ECB policy and …
2nd June 2023
Optimism building about policy shift in Turkey All the attention in Turkey this week has been on whether President Erdogan will moderate his economic policies now that he has secured another five-year term. The latest signs of an improvement in …
After last week’s surprise rebound in core CPI inflation, this week’s data showed that higher interest rates are starting to percolate more meaningfully throughout the economy. That will have given the Bank of England more encouragement on its mission to …
The big news this week was the downward revision to Germany’s estimate of Q1 GDP, which is now thought to have contracted by 0.3% q/q rather than stagnating. That pushed the economy into a technical recession as it had contracted by 0.5% in Q4 last year, …
26th May 2023
Attention focusing on financial stability in Turkey With the second round vote of Turkey’s presidential election taking centre stage on Sunday, the day of reckoning for Turkey’s economy and financial markets may now just be around the corner. The …
The title of the UK Economic Outlook we published in March was “Recession needed to solve the inflation problem”. (See here .) The argument was that the drags from high inflation and a rise in interest rates to 4.50% would weaken activity and domestic …
Erdogan in pole position for the presidency Sunday’s presidential election result in Turkey was all about Erdogan. He gained more than 49% of the vote share after some of the more reliable polls last week had opposition candidate Kemel Kilicdaroglu at …
19th May 2023
The UK economy’s underperformance and higher and longer lasting inflation problem has earned it the unenviable title of “stagflation nation”. (See here and our podcast : “What’s wrong with the UK economy and what will it take to fix it”?) And speculation …
Sweden inflation surprise As of this week, coverage of Switzerland and the Nordic economies will be incorporated, along with the euro-zone, in our expanded Europe Economics service. We will continue to analyse the economic data from the Nordics and …
Czech government tightens the purse strings The Czech government’s long-awaited fiscal consolidation package this week will include fiscal tightening of around 1.5% of GDP over 2024/25 which will come at the cost of weaker growth. But this appears to be a …
12th May 2023
Yesterday’s 25 basis point rise in interest rates from 4.25% to 4.50% was widely expected in the end. But we’ve been forecasting that rates would rise to 4.50% since November last year. (See here .) The most striking thing coming out of yesterday’s …
Over the past few years France has been an exception to the pattern in many other countries of falling labour supply and declining labour force participation. And there is no sign that this improvement is running out of steam. Total employment in France …
The fragility of Sweden’s property sector hit the headlines again this week as commercial real estate firm SBB suffered a downgrade of its credit rating to “junk” status and cancelled its dividend. We covered the implications for property elsewhere but …
Pound standing to attention for King’s Coronation Note: We’ll be discussing the Bank of England’s May decision in an online briefing at 10:00 EDT/15:00 BST on Thursday, 11 th May . Register Now . The Coronation of King Charles III means the UK is on show …
5th May 2023
Note: We’ll be discussing the economic and market risks around the upcoming Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections on at 09:00 EDT/14:00 BST on 10 th May . Register now. Turkey’s election race heats up Opinion polls are now painting a clearer …
Hard data released this week paint a more downbeat picture of the euro-zone economy than the latest surveys. Three points are worth highlighting. First, the data confirm that the 0.1% q/q rise in euro-zone GDP in Q1 masks a greater weakness in domestic …
The Bank of England’s Chief Economist, Huw Pill, has come under fire this week after saying that everyone in the UK “needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices whether through higher …
28th April 2023
CEE edges closer towards monetary easing Central banks across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) provided firmer signs this week that, with inflation now declining , monetary loosening may soon be on the cards. But there are still clearly big concerns that …
MNB takes its first steps towards interest rate cuts The deputy governor of the Hungarian central bank (MNB) made a splash this week by signalling that policymakers may cut the upper end of the bank’s interest rate corridor at their meeting next Tuesday. …
21st April 2023
The stubbornness of CPI inflation in March, which seems more marked than elsewhere (see here ), has left us more comfortable than we were at the start of this week with our view that the Bank of England will raise interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) …
More signs of economic resilience… GDP data due next week are likely to confirm that, after stagnating in Q4, the euro-zone economy returned to growth in Q1. We have pencilled in a 0.2% q/q expansion in the region as a whole, with positive outturns in …
Surge in household incomes unlikely to be sustained The UK economy has continued to be more resilient to the twin drags of higher inflation and higher interest rates than we thought. Real GDP was flat in February despite an extra drag from the strikes. …
14th April 2023
Headline inflation falling, but little else to cheer for The raft of March inflation data released across Emerging Europe this week showed that the regional disinflation process is now well underway, but that core price pressures remain incredibly strong. …
Data point to positive growth in Q1 The latest official activity data suggest that the euro-zone economy posted a small expansion in Q1. Admittedly, retail sales fell in February, continuing the downward trend they have been on for over a year. But lower …
Current market pricing suggests that there is around a 60% chance that, at the next policy meeting in May, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) raises interest rates by 25bps, from 4.25% now to 4.50%. This isn’t surprising given the decision will probably …
6th April 2023
Expansion in Q1 likely… After stagnating in Q4, euro-zone GDP probably rose in the first quarter. The final Composite PMI , released this week, confirmed that economic conditions improved further in March (though a bit less than implied by the flash …
CEE remains in recession in Q1 The batch of hard activity data and surveys released across Central Europe this week were relatively weak and suggest that GDP contracted in most economies again in Q1. We think the regional downturn will stabilise in Q2, …
While there are downside risks from hidden exposures or a sudden loss of confidence and deposits, our sense is that the banking issues won’t escalate significantly further, or spread to UK banks. (See here .) The broad message from this week’s …
31st March 2023
This time last week the markets and financial media were worrying about the future of Deutsche Bank. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz publicly stated that the bank was “very profitable” and President Macron declared that the European banking sector as a …
As we discussed in our “Drop In” webinar after this week’s Bank of England policy decision (see here ), the 25 basis points (bps) hike in interest rates, from 4.00% to 4.25%, could prove to be the end of the tightening cycle. But it is the data on the …
24th March 2023
A few key points on Europe’s banks We discussed the recent turmoil in the banking sector in a Drop-in this week. (See here , or you can listen to a shorter version on our podcast here .) The big picture is that there are reasons to be cautiously …
The past week has provided a worrying reminder of the fragility of banking systems to rising interest rates. All our analysis on this can be found on our key themes page . Many metrics of financial market functioning have deteriorated worryingly fast and …
17th March 2023
Euro-zone bank equities have come under severe pressure this week after troubles at some US regional banks and at Credit Suisse raised concerns about the health of banking systems more generally. At the time of writing, the Eurostoxx bank index is down …
