LONDON — The eurozone economy, for so long a source of uncertainty, has enjoyed its best year in a decade, clear evidence it has broken out of its prolonged and acute debt crisis that raised fears about the very survival of the euro currency. In its first estimate for the fourth quarter, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, said Tuesday that the eurozone expanded by 0.6 per cent in the October-December period from the three months before. That more-than-healthy level of growth means that for the whole of 2017, the eurozone economy expanded by 2.5 per cent, its best performance since 2007, when it grew 3 per cent. That exposed the weak underbelly of the eurozone — the state of the public finances in a number of member economies. The Greek economy, for example, shed around a quarter of its output, and saw unemployment and poverty levels ratchet higher.

Source: National Post January 30, 2018 10:39 UTC