Eurozone News

The Bank of England (BoE) on Thursday froze interest rates at 0.5 percent, but warned borrowing costs could rise more quickly than expected to bring down inflation, sparking fresh turmoil in the markets.

Economic growth in the Eurozone hit 2.5%, far ahead of the 1.8% reached a year earlier.

European Central Bank governors meet in Frankfurt on Thursday as expectations grow that they will soon announce an end to their "quantitative easing" bond-buying programme.

In its updated World Economic Outlook, the IMF said global gross domestic product would be 3.5 percent in 2017 and 3.6 percent in 2018.

After more than eight hours of talks in Brussels overnight, eurozone finance ministers and the IMF failed to settle their deep differences on the thorny debt question.

The eurozone jobless rate in February fell to its lowest level since May 2009 as a resurgent hiring spree took hold despite uncertainty over Brexit, EU data showed Monday.

Greece, the eurozone and IMF are in a three-way Mexican stand-off over a review of the country`s 86 billion bailout agreed in July 2015, its third since 2010.

Eurozone lenders and the International Monetary Fund have reached agreed between themselves to present a common stance to Greece later on Friday in talks on reforms and the fiscal path Athens must take, Eurozone officials said.

The European Central Bank left key interest rates and its mass bond-buying programme unchanged Thursday, at its first meeting of a year when the Frankfurt institution could become a political punching bag.

Inflation in the eurozone jumped in December to the highest level in more than three years on the back of surging oil prices, official EU figures showed on Wednesday.

Unemployment in the eurozone has fallen below the symbolic mark of 10 percent for the first time since April 2011, EU data showed on Thursday.

Eurozone inflation rose to a two-and-a-half-year high in November as Europe inched away from very low consumer prices that have threatened an already fragile economic recovery.

Eurozone business activity expanded the most in nearly a year in November on strong manufacturing and buoyant services growth in Germany, stirring some optimism that economic momentum is picking up again. 

The European Central Bank is looking for ways to lend out more of its huge pile of government debt to avert a freeze in the 5.5 trillion euro short-term funding market that underpins the financial system, central bank sources told Reuters.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem has dismissed as "intellectually impossible" the notion that Britain could retain unfettered access to the European single market while also cutting down on EU immigration.

The European Central Bank`s easy-money policy has let eurozone governments delay key reforms, a German expert panel said Wednesday, urging the Frankfurt institution to ease off the massive stimulus spending.

Economic growth in the eurozone remained low but stable in the third quarter as inflation rose to a 27-month high amid fears over Brexit and major elections in France and Germany.

 Eurozone consumer prices rose to a near two-year high of 0.4 percent in September, data showed Friday, offering hope that a disputed programme by the ECB to stimulate the economy may be delivering.

Eurozone business growth in August was at its weakest since the start of last year, suggesting the bloc`s struggling economy is losing what little momentum it had, a private sector survey showed on Monday.

Eurozone unemployment meanwhile was unchanged at 10.1 percent in July, the Eurostat statistics agency.