FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Italy is standing out as the European economy’s problem child. Again.
Other countries that used to be the bearers of bad news – Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal – are slowly healing from the debt crisis that ravaged the currency union for much of the past five years.
Italy, by contrast, slid back into recession in the second quarter. And efforts by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to shake up the country’s bureaucracy-choked economy have slowed, just six months after he promised to strike swiftly.
The troubles in the euro’s third-largest economy are weighing on the already weak economic recovery in the 18-country eurozone and complicating life for the European Central Bank.
Figures Thursday are expected to show the eurozone barely grew the second quarter. The expectation in the markets is that it grew by a quarterly rate of 0.1 percent – around 0.4 percent on an annualized basis.