Euro-Area Economy Contracted 0.1% in Second Quarter

Bloomberg reports:

The euro region’s economy barely contracted in the second quarter as Germany and France unexpectedly returned to growth, suggesting Europe’s worst recession since World War II is coming to an end.

Gross domestic product fell 0.1 percent from the first quarter, when it plunged 2.5 percent, the most since the euro- area data were first compiled in 1995, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Economists had estimated GDP declined 0.5 percent in the three months through June, the median of 32 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey showed.