BusinessEurope Economic Outlook Autumn 2015 - Global risks underline need for reforms to 'lock in' the recovery

Released on 15 October 2015, BusinessEurope Autumn Economic Outlook indicates that over the last six months, EU businesses have experienced a continuing gradual economic recovery, broadly in line with our expectations of in the spring. With oil prices remaining low, a still relatively low euro exchange rate and the ECB support, for this year we expect output to expand by 2.0% in the EU and by 1.7% in the Euro-area (up by 0.1 pp for both), with potential GDP growth of 2.0% in the EU and 1.8% in the Euro-area in 2016 (both down by 0.1 pp). Given the temporary nature of the supporting factors, both the EU and its member states urgently need to press ahead with growth-enhancing structural reforms that raise potential growth and ‘lock-in’ the present recovery. The ongoing growth slowdown in emerging markets is likely to create a more challenging global trading environment which underlines the need for reforms to support competitiveness. There is little evidence so far of specific factors such as emerging market slowdown impacting on EU output. However, this factor represents a potentially important downside risk to growth.

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