Eurozone emerges from recession but France, Germany stay weak

Sander Tordoir, a senior economist at the Centre for European Reform, told Euractiv that the data suggests that the supply shocks triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “are really well and truly behind us”.

“There is some life left in the European economy,” he said. However, he warned that growth in the bloc’s two largest economies, Germany and France, which both expanded by just 0.2%, remains concerning: “Germany remains weak; France is also not great,” he said.

“[The data] puts the ECB on track to do a rate cut in June, which would then be another shot in the arm for the European economy,” Tordoir noted.