European economic sentiment falls in 2023

Italy showed resilience in the European Commission's latest economic sentiment survey for 2023, despite an overall decline in sentiment levels across the continent compared to the start of last year, reported Xinhua.

Economic growth data for European Union (EU) member states will not be released in weeks, but the slowdown in economic sentiment has reflected an expected deceleration in the bloc's growth.

The commission's Economic Sentiment Indicator started 2023 at 97.4 points for the EU as a whole, but it fell in each of the first nine months before rebounding to 95.6 points during the last quarter.

"Higher interest rates, slower exports, higher energy prices, and other factors have combined to dampen European economic growth prospects and it's not a surprise that economic sentiment has followed suit," Javier Noriega, chief economist with Milan-based investment bank Hildebrandt and Ferrar, told Xinhua.

Italy was a positive part in the survey, gaining 2.6 points in December to finish the year at 99.3 points, though it was still below the 102.6-point level recorded in January 2023. Noriega attributed the pick-up of economic sentiment in Italy to a dramatic slowdown in inflation, which was just 0.6 percent in December year-on-year.

Of the bloc's five largest economies -- Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, only the Netherlands improved over the course of 2023, gaining 0.9 points for the year. Spain was the only country to finish the year above 100 points, including a gain of 2.4 points in December.

In the latest report, the commission projected that upon the completion of the final calculations, the economies of both the European Union and the Eurozone would show a growth of 0.6 percent for the past year, indicating a decrease from the earlier projections of 0.8 percent growth estimated in the mid-year and a 1-percent expansion forecast in the first quarter of the year.