The lights of the banking skyline of Frankfurt am Main shine in the last daylight.
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The eurozone economy grew more than expected in the second quarter of 2024, preliminary figures from the European Union's statistics office showed on Tuesday.
The zone's gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent in the three months to the end of June compared with the previous quarter, the data showed. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.2 percent increase on a quarterly basis.
GDP growth for the first quarter was confirmed at 0.3%, unchanged from the figure announced at the beginning of the year.
The eurozone slipped into a technical recession in the second half of 2023 as GDP contracted in both the third and fourth quarters of the year, according to revised figures released earlier this year.
Bert Colijn, chief eurozone economist at ING, said in a note on Tuesday that the data suggested the region's economy was recovering somewhat.
“After stagnation throughout 2023, this is a relief and shows that the economy has started to recover cautiously,” he said, adding that the economy is now in a better position than a year ago.
“The question remains where the economy will go from here, and recent data do not give much cause for confidence that the eurozone economy will continue to gain momentum,” Colijn said.
Data released earlier in the day showed that Germany, the euro zone's largest economy, unexpectedly shrank by 0.1 percent in the second quarter, falling short of expectations of analysts polled by Reuters who had expected the country's GDP to grow by 0.1 percent.
Germany was one of only four countries whose GDP fell in the three months to the end of June, according to the European Union's statistics office. Latvia, Sweden and Hungary were the other three countries to report declines.
Klaus Wohlrabe, head of the ifo surveys, said in a statement on Wednesday that the German economy is “in crisis” and that the situation is not expected to improve significantly in the third quarter.
Ireland recorded the strongest growth of 1.2 percent in the second quarter, while France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, recorded GDP growth of 0.3 percent in the same period, the French statistics office said on Tuesday.
Eurozone inflation figures will be released on Wednesday. The new eurozone data comes this week after the European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged at its meeting earlier this month and said the option of a cut in September was “fully open.”
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