Europe Edges Closer to Tipping Into Recession

Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union.

The likelihood of a recession in Europe is continuing to rise, something EU finance ministers will discuss next Monday and Tuesday. In the short term, the euro area will experience zero or negative growth with high inflation, a senior EU official admitted yesterday. We’ll learn more about the extent of the slowdown next Friday, when the Commission update its economic forecast for 2023. Against this difficult backdrop, the EU’s executive arm will also put forward proposals next week to give more leeway to member states to cut their public debt but will require stricter enforcement of their fiscal commitments.