EU Commission: Eurozone set for record recession, Greek GDP to contract by 9.7 pct

The eurozone economy will contract by a record 7.7 percent this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation will almost disappear while public debt and budget deficits will balloon, the European Commission forecast on Wednesday.

"Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent since the Great Depression," European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Paolo Gentiloni said.

"Both the depth of the recession and the strength of recovery will be uneven, conditioned by the speed at which lockdowns can be lifted, the importance of services like tourism in each economy and by each country's financial resources," he said.

The Commission forecast that, as the economy contracts this year, consumer prices will almost stagnate. The inflation rate will slow to 0.2 percent in 2020, before accelerating to 1.1 percent next year, when the eurozone...