{"id":275525,"date":"2026-02-01T15:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T15:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275525\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T15:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T15:32:07","slug":"eu-economic-growth-belies-talk-of-malaise-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275525\/","title":{"rendered":"EU economic growth belies talk of malaise \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems that, for now at least, reports of the death of Europe\u2019s economy have been greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

The euro zone economy expanded <\/a>0.3 per cent GDP during the final three months of 2025, Eurostat said on Friday. That was ahead of the 0.2 per cent growth expected by economists. <\/p>\n

Notably, the growth came despite the Irish economy contracting 0.6 per cent during the period. Given the influence of multinationals on Ireland\u2019s GDP, in recent years it hasn\u2019t been unusual for this country to be responsible for keeping the Eurozone in overall growth, or decline. <\/p>\n

This time it was Spain that was the main driver of growth, with its GDP rising 0.8 per cent. Meanwhile Germany and France \u2013 the two traditional drivers of the continental European economy \u2013 expanded 0.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively. <\/p>\n

The 1.2 per cent annual growth rate may pale compared to the US and its 4.4 per cent annual rate at present, but it comes after a year that was widely expected to cause havoc with the EU economy. <\/p>\n

Whether it was the impact of US president Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a>, both on the EU and as the driver of a flood of cheap exports from China into the bloc, or the drain of the ongoing war in Ukraine, there has been widespread pressure on the EU. <\/p>\n

The tariffs in particular, and the general hostility from Washington to the union has been an ongoing theme of the past 12 months. Germany and its manufacturing sector that is so reliant on the US market had been a subject of much hand-wringing, both in Germany and continentwide. <\/p>\n

Amid anaemic economic growth there, Germany had started to be referred to as the sick man of Europe. There\u2019s always been a \u201csick man of Europe,\u201d it\u2019s just rarely been the biggest economy in the bloc. <\/p>\n

So growth ahead of expectations will be welcome. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say all the problems have gone away now. Trump could do almost anything tomorrow that may cause concern in EU capitals. The Chinese imports problem is still there, and so is the Russian threat. But for now, it seems the EU can bask in some badly needed good news. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems that, for now at least, reports of the death of Europe\u2019s economy have been greatly exaggerated.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,6572,969,113,5148,1814,292,61,60,2846,1963],"class_list":{"0":"post-275525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cantillon","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-spain","18":"tag-us-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275525","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=275525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}