Free Republic

A mild winter so far, efforts by businesses and households to cut energy consumption, successful moves by governments to find new natural-gas suppliers and hundreds of billions of euros in fiscal support mean Europe’s recession is likely to be shallow and brief—if it happens at all—according to fresh data and estimates. And with energy costs now falling back toward levels seen before Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the cost of the subsidies and tax relief deployed by European capitals to soften the blow are set to shrink, reducing their impact on public finances. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, output was unchanged...