Poor economic performance and worries over a slowdown – as well as uncertainty over Brexit – are continuing to keep the euro in a low range against the pound, while it also ended Thursday down against the dollar.
Last week saw poor performance from German industry and construction, and headlines were made when the European Commission downgraded its growth forecasts.
Today is relatively quiet for economic releases, but we will see economic sentiment figures on Tuesday for the eurozone and Germany, eurozone industrial production and German inflation on Wednesday and German and eurozone GDP figures on Thursday. The EU’s largest economy will certainly be in the spotlight, and it will be interesting to see if the figures show any form of an upturn to what has been a poor performance over the last few quarters.
Member of the European Commission’s Governing Council Bostjan Vasle told a banking conference last Friday that the ECB, now with Christine Lagarde at the helm, would continue with its present policy programme until economic conditions improve.
The outcome of Spanish election is also putting pressure on the euro, which resulted in a hung Parliament yesterday. The Socialists will try and rule in the short term with a minority government, but the whole country will be wary of the far right Vox party, who more than doubled their seats.
