{"id":49110,"date":"2026-05-21T11:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/49110\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T11:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:36:17","slug":"eurozone-business-activity-shrinks-further-in-may-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/49110\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurozone Business Activity Shrinks Further In May"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eurozone<\/p>\n

Business activity in the eurozone contracted further in May, weighed down by weak demand caused by the Middle East war, a key survey showed Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"Eurozone<\/p>\n

The\u00a0eurozone\u00a0<\/a>purchasing managers’ index (PMI) published by S&P Global, an important gauge of the economy’s overall health, registered a reading of 47.5 \u2014 a 31-month low \u2014 after 48.8\u00a0in\u00a0April.<\/p>\n

A reading above 50 indicates growth while a figure below 50 signals contraction.<\/p>\n

There were “sharper falls\u00a0in output, new orders and employment were recorded, while business confidence slipped lower”, according to the survey.<\/p>\n

“May’s flash PMI survey data show the\u00a0eurozone economy taking an increasingly severe toll from the war in the Middle East,” S&P chief business economist Chris Williamson said in\u00a0a note.<\/p>\n

“The rise\u00a0in the survey’s price gauges already hints at inflation running close to four percent in\u00a0the coming months which, combined with the growing signs of the region slipping into an economic downturn, creates a deepening dilemma for policymakers,” he added.<\/p>\n

Inflation leapt to three percent\u00a0in\u00a0April, significantly higher than the European Central Bank’s two percent target.<\/p>\n

Both Germany and France \u2014 the 21-country single currency area’s two biggest economies \u2014 posted contractions in\u00a0business activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

France recorded its biggest drop in 5.5 years while Germany registered a contraction in May, albeit at a slower pace than\u00a0in April.<\/p>\n

The European Commission will later Thursday publish its latest forecasts for economic growth and inflation in both the European Union as a whole and the\u00a0eurozone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business activity in the eurozone contracted further in May, weighed down by weak demand caused by the Middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2480],"tags":[29849,635,16566,2487,2486,2485,29851,2036,12149,29850],"class_list":["post-49110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-euro-zone","tag-activity","tag-business","tag-cyprus-mirror","tag-euro-area","tag-euro-zone","tag-eurozone","tag-further","tag-in","tag-may","tag-shrinks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}