Eurozone: 2017 surprised on the upside - ING

Analysts at ING see continued strong performance of Eurozone, thanks in part to a generous supply of money and suggests that we could even see a further acceleration of growth from here.

Key Quotes

“About a year ago, sentiment about the Eurozone was downbeat. People were still reeling from the UK decision to leave the EU and the US Presidential elections caused a lack of trust in political polling. This led to EU disintegration risk to top the list of investor worries with many Eurozone elections ahead.”

“About a year later, things look very different. Europe’s most boring election, in Germany, actually seems to have resulted in the largest uncertainty of all. Most governments formed have either maintained previous positions on Europe or become more euro-minded.”

“With so much focus on politics, acceleration of economic indicators went almost unnoticed at first. But a strengthening job market, weak inflation, exports profiting from improving global growth and decade highs for consumer confidence are causing the Eurozone economy to accelerate. This year, we expect GDP growth to come in at 2.3%, which would be a tie for strongest growth in a decade. There are few signs pointing to a slow start of 2018 either. We, therefore, expect growth at 2.2% in 2018, well above trend.”