AG百家乐在线官网

It is difficult to know where to start when assessing the European Commission's latest economic forecasts for the EU's 28 member states.

For there are just so many things to be worried about.

Probably the biggest single cause for concern, though, is Germany.

The most important economy in the EU is expected to grow by just 0.5% this year, lower than any other country aside from Italy, a perennial basket case.

Moreover, this is the second time this year that the Commission has downgraded its growth forecast for Germany, having chopped its forecast from 1.8% to 1.1% in February.

Germany, whose economy contracted in the third quarter of last year and which was lucky to avoid slipping into a technical recession at the end of 2018, has undoubtedly been caught in the cross-fire between the Americans and Chinese over trade.

China is not Germany's biggest export market but it is nonetheless a big buyer of the machine tools in which German manufacturers specialise - around 17% of German exports to countries outside the EU go there - and demand has been hit as a result of the trade war.

Worse may follow: it has been estimated that President Trump's threat to slap tariffs of up to 25% on EU cars exported to the United States could, if implemented, halve German car exports to the US within a decade, while costing German car manufacturers €7.8bn in the first year.

Under those circumstances, a growth forecast of even 0.5% would begin to look optimistic.

If Germany's economy sneezes, the rest of the EU catches a cold.

It is why the Commission also downgraded its growth forecast for the eurozone's members from 1.3% to 1.2%.

But Germany is not the only concern created by these spring forecasts.

Italy, whose economy has only just emerged from its third recession in a decade, saw its projected growth cut from 0.2% to 0.1%.

This patchy growth means that Italy has little hope of bringing down its budget deficit which, this year, the Commission forecasts will now be 2.5% of Italian GDP and, in 2020, 3.5% of Italian GDP.

This would, of course, break rules set out by the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 that require EU member states not to run deficits of more than 3% of GDP.

The extra borrowing necessitated by such a deficit would also mean, according to the Commission, Italy's total borrowing this year will balloon to 133.7% of Italian GDP - a record.

This kind of deficit and that kind of public debt could well reignite rows between Rome and Brussels over the populist government's spending plans, with the likes of the Netherlands already arguing that the Commission should have taken a harder line.

A deficit of that kind would also, of course, pit Italy against the "vigilantes" of the bond markets that punish governments for excessive spending.

Not that Italy is the only one at risk of breaking the rules on deficits.

The Commission predicts that France, whose economy is expected to grow by 1.3% this year instead of the previously forecast 1.6%, will also run a deficit this year of 3.1% of GDP as Emmanuel Macron's government raises public spending to try and assuage the anger of so-called "yellow vest" protesters.

Even those economies where growth is expected to be comfortably above the EU average have seen their growth forecasts cut since the autumn.

The Republic of Ireland, which was previously expected to enjoy GDP growth of 4.5% this year, is now expected to grow by 3.8%.

Predicted growth for the Netherlands has been chopped from 2.4% to 1.6% while Austria falls from 2% to 1.5%.

It is hard to find many positives in these revised forecasts although Poland's economy is now predicted to grow by 4.2% this year, up from 3.7% in the autumn, while Malta's predicted growth this year has been upgraded from 4.9% to 5.5%.

The UK is also one of the economies now predicted to grow this year by more than it was in the autumn - although the uptick here is from 1.2% to a still pretty anaemic 1.3%.

The Commission highlights the harm that uncertainty over the terms on which the UK will leave the EU has done to the UK economy, particularly on business investment, but what is crucial is that its forecasts are assuming the UK will leave on the terms agreed between Theresa May's government and the 27 other EU countries.

It adds: "Any deviation from the technical assumption of unchanged trade relationships between the UK and the EU that underlies these forecasts, and in particular a 'no deal' Brexit, would dampen economic growth, particularly in the UK but also in the EU27, though to a minor extent."

Arguably the biggest positive identified by the Commission is that, for the seventh consecutive year, it expects the EU economy to grow.

It forecasts the EU as a whole will grow by 1.4% this year and 1.6% in 2020.

That in itself is praiseworthy given that some countries, notably Latvia, Lithuania and Romania, are already suffering falls in the population while the population in the likes of Germany and Italy are growing only thanks to migration.

Overall, though, the picture is far from encouraging.

There are all kinds of implications in this for the European Central Bank.

Just before Christmas it stopped buying bonds to stimulate the eurozone economy but, no sooner had it taken that action, then Mario Draghi, its president, was having to promise that the bank stood ready to take further action if growth remained weak.

He indicated that the ECB's main policy rate would be kept at its current level of zero until at least the rest of the year and markets are not expecting it to change until the middle of next year.

And those policy responses - the ECB's overnight deposit rate for banks is -0.4% - are only to enable the current lacklustre growth rates.

If some of the serious downside risks to these forecasts emerge, not only a 'no deal' Brexit but also a further deterioration in global trade, Mr Draghi may yet find himself having to resort to the type of emergency policies he implemented in the aftermath of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.