The European Commission Spring Forecast is the spring round of EU forecasts from DG ECFIN, the Commission economics department. Eurostat, the EU statistics office, only supplies past data used in it. It gives a full report and tables for all 27 EU states, euro area (euro users) and EU totals, candidates and major economies. It is a judgement projection for the two forecast years, not observed data, targets, plans or ECB projections: GDP, inflation, jobs, deficit and debt.
It appears once a year in mid May as one of 4 yearly rounds, with autumn full and winter and summer interim updates. Information freezes at a cut off date about 2 to 3 weeks before release, so later data is left out. It is posted on ECFIN forecast pages and the Commission press service, with a press conference, full report, data annex, country pages, charts and slides. Each round revises the prior round in points; readers track growth and HICP revisions and deficit and debt paths against 3% and 60%.
Headline growth moves through 6 groups covering spending, prices, jobs, budgets, external demand and risks.
The Spring 2020 round published 6 May 2020 shows the method under stress. It called the deepest EU recession on record, with EU output down 7.4% in 2020 after growth of 1.5% in 2019. Output then rose 6.1% in 2021, still below the old path.
Private consumption, long the growth engine, fell about 9% as saving jumped in quarter 2. The rebound rested on 3 stated conditions: curbs eased gradually, the virus stayed controlled and policy support limited lasting damage. Unemployment reached 9.0% and the deficit 8.3% of GDP before both eased with recovery.
Key point: the figures assume no new policy and only count adopted or credible measures, so they are not targets, plans or observed data.
No historical data available
