020 7898 0500It has been surprisingly a quiet week for the multi-nation currency, with limited data out this week. Monday saw the start of the ECOFIN meetings, which is a meeting involving the Finance Ministers of the Eurozone. Topics were mainly focused on the Greek election result and Russian sanctions. Greek election results were also released Monday which showed the newly elected Syriza party take power, by forming a coalition with the Greek Independents, another anti-austerity party.
The opening of the Greek elections had resulted in slight weakness for the euro. However, this quickly turned to strength as the newly elected Syriza party confirmed their wish to stay in the euro and Eurozone. Their main aim is to re-negotiate their current austerity measures and package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Eurozone; negotiations started on Thursday.
There were minimal data releases this week. We saw German consumer indication data which showed a slight increase on the previous month. German inflation suffered the same fate as EU inflation, continuing to drop and is now the lowest inflation rate this century for Germany. This can be attributed to the fall in oil prices and food prices, as well as the lack of growth in the Eurozone economy. German unemployment remained a positive figure with a drop in unemployment levels.
Today we will see a few key data releases with German retail sales, French consumer spending and Spanish inflation as well as growth data. The main data release will be the Eurozone initial inflation figure, which is predicted, yet again, to be below the previous month’s.
