Eurozone recovering, but the jury's still out

BATTERED by continual crises, eurozone bond and stock markets surprised doomsayers and performed far better than expected. The region's economy, however, has experienced only a gingerly revival so far, with Germany the leader, but France a growing problem.

The only major scare in 2013 came from events on the small island of Cyprus, but predictions that the crisis would envelop Greece and other weak nations in the eurozone proved to be wrong.

At the beginning of the year, the outlook was dire. Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, reported that the eurozone economy had plunged in the final quarter of 2012. Gross domestic product of the region had fallen 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter compared with the third, and it was the fifth quarter in which the currency bloc had failed to expand. For 2012 as a whole, GDP of the eurozone contracted 0.5 per cent.