The European Union (EU) has warned that the eurozone will slide into recession over the winter with Brussels putting up inflation forecasts for 2022 and 2023 amid soaring energy prices.
Europe has been struggling for months with severe economic shockwaves from the Ukraine war that has fuelled a spike in energy prices and hit the wallets of consumers around the continent.
The EU’s executive arm on Friday afternoon said the eurozone and many EU member states ‘are expected’ to slip into recession in the final quarter of the year as inflation continues to soar and high fuel and heating costs hit consumer purchasing power.
The European Commission’s autumn forecast released Friday predicts falling economic output in the last three months of this year and the first months of 2023.
It says high energy prices, a rising cost of living, higher interest rates and overall uncertainty ‘are expected to tip the EU, the euro area and most member states into recession in the last quarter of the year’.
The European Commission announced that it is likely that the decline in economic activity will continue in the first quarter of 2023, so growth may return to the continent in the spring of next year.
With strong headwinds dampening demand, economic activity will slow and GDP growth will slow to 0.3 per cent in 2023.
This forecast was made while the commission has greatly increased its forecasts for inflation this year and the next year.
Eurozone inflation is expected to reach 8.5 per cent in 2022, one point higher than previously forecast, and 6.1 per cent in 2023, two points higher than previously said.
EU Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said inflation is rising more than expected but is nearing a peak and is likely to peak at the end of this year.
Critics say the EU’s move to cut out Russia’s cheap gas, over the war in Ukraine, is backfiring. Despite this, a 9th round of sanctions against Moscow is being prepared.
‘Peace’ seems to be a dirty word in Western capitals.
This, as the US weapons and energy sectors make enormous profits while ordinary EU citizens pay a very high price.
Europe has been engulfed by widespread transport strikes as workers squeezed by the soaring cost of living seek raises.
On Thursday, commuters in London and Paris either tried to reach their destinations through alternative ways or just simply stayed home as public transport workers took part in strikes for higher pay, the latest industrial protest seeking relief from spiralling prices in the continent.
Both the United Kingdom and France are already spending billions, trying to blunt the worst effects of soaring prices, at least for the most vulnerable, but the adopted measures have so far largely failed to stop labour unrest from spreading.
‘I am very deeply affected by the strike,’ said a 36-year-old man in London. ‘I took my car, the train and now I have to cycle.’
In the UK, the strike was staged by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and Unite unions.
It followed several prior walkouts this year amid a long-running dispute over job cuts, pensions and working conditions.
The RMT said a conditional offer to stop the walkout on Tuesday with Transport for London (TfL) bosses failed.
RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said: ‘TfL have missed a golden opportunity to make progress in these negotiations and avoid strike action.’
Authorities in the capital said the Underground system was ‘severely disrupted’, with reduced or no services running, advising Londoners to avoid using the network.
On top of Thursday’s walkout in London’s Underground, British nurses are going to hold the first strike in the 106-year history of their Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union at a date yet to be announced.
In France, the walkout seeks to dial up pressure on President Emmanuel Macron before he brings a contentious pensions-overhaul bill to parliament.
The bill, if approved, would require millions of people to work longer before retiring.
‘It’s to show that if we want to take action, we know how to take action,’ Frederic Souillot, head of France’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union, said ahead of the Paris strike.
Public transport operator RATP of Paris has already announced that almost every Metro line would stop working or operating with only a limited rush-hour service, urging people to remote working or postpone trips if possible.
The two main suburban rail lines RER A and PER B, linking central Paris to Disneyland Paris and the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, were hit by more severe disruptions.
In Greece, a general strike halted ferries from serving the country’s many islands.
It was the second protest action since September.
Sporadic unrest was reported in the capital Athens.
Unions in Greece are insisting on salary rises to cope with soaring inflation, which has now reached 12 per cent.
In Spain, lorry drivers said they would go on an indefinite strike from tomorrow.
Their last stoppage, back in March, led to empty supermarket shelves.
Last Wednesday, a general strike paralysed Belgium, affecting airports, rail traffic, and hospitals across the country.
The Belgian rail authority said only every fourth train offered a service. The main airport in the capital Brussels also saw more than half of all its flights cancelled.
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned what she called the ‘aggressive reaction’ of the French government to taking in a migrant rescue vessel rejected by Rome.
She told a press conference on Friday that it was ‘incomprehensible and unjustified’, after Paris said it would accept the Ocean Viking and the 234 migrants onboard, but suspend a previous plan to take in 3,500 refugees currently in Italy.
Earlier an Italian government spokesman warned France against escalating tensions by limiting Rome’s access to the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery funds.
Meloni said: ‘I hope they are not referring to the EU post-pandemic funds,’ as any such action would be ‘very serious’.
Giovanbattista Fazzolari, undersecretary for the implementation of the government programme Fazzolari stressed that Italy demands ‘only respect’ after French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the migration row between Rome and Paris would have ‘extremely strong consequences for the bilateral relationship’.
Italy is entitled to more than 200 billion euros in cheap loans and grants under the EU’s 800 billion euros recovery fund adopted in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, being the biggest beneficiary among the EU-27 nations of the so-called European Recovery And Resilience Fund (PNRR).
The French government on Thursday agreed to welcome the charity-run Ocean Viking rescue boat into one of its ports following Italy’s refusal to let it dock on its territory with more than 200 migrants on board.
Darmanin censured the far right Italian government’s ban on the charity vessel, which had been stuck off Sicily for days, as ‘reprehensible’ and ‘selfish’.
Darmanin said: ‘France decided on an exceptional basis to make up for the Italian government’s unacceptable behaviour and to invite the ship to come.
‘France deeply regrets that Italy has decided not to behave like a responsible European state in dealing with this matter.’
Italian authorities dismissed the criticism, saying the French reaction underscored Europe’s failure to deal with a rising number of migrants, many of whom reach the continent via boats from North Africa.
The Ocean Viking, carrying 234 passengers, including around 60 children and 20 sick people, docked in the southern French city of Toulon on Friday.
About a third of the passengers will remain in France, while another third will go on to Germany.
The French-Italian feud is the latest episode in a European stand-off over where to disembark refugees picked up after trying to reach Europe from North Africa.
The embattled French president Emmanuel Macron’s government now faces an increasingly assertive far-right led by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National that has been highly critical of the government’s handling of migration.
