The euro zone economy unexpectedly grew by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025 despite geopolitical tensions and widespread uncertainty.<\/p>\n
The pace of growth was better than the 0.2 per cent expected by economists and in line with the 0.3 per cent recorded in the previous three months. <\/p>\n
The euro zone economy has now expanded for nine consecutive quarters.The European Central Bank (ECB)<\/a> recently raised its gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for this year to 1.2 per cent, and is widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged at 2 per cent at its first meeting of 2026 next week.<\/p>\n ECB president Christine Lagarde <\/a>has repeatedly praised the euro zone\u2019s economic \u201cresilience\u201d, with growth proving stronger than forecast at the start of 2025 despite US President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Germany, Europe\u2019s biggest economy, expanded last year for the first time since 2022 and is expected to accelerate further as the government borrows heavily to invest in infrastructure and defence.<\/p>\n The euro was little changed after the data, down 0.5 per cent against a broadly stronger dollar at $1.191.<\/p>\n Traders\u2019 interest rate expectations also barely shifted, with a roughly 25 per cent chance of a further quarter-point cut this year, according to swap markets. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The euro zone economy unexpectedly grew by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025 despite geopolitical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,14724,969,113,12965,61,60],"class_list":["post-273123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-christine-lagarde","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-european-central-bank-ecb","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}