Dr. Jens Kramer, Economist at NORD/LB, analyses Eurozone's economy

Our opinion is that the Eurozone recession indeed is over; however, the upswing is very fragile. We have to pay attention that we will not have another dropdown in the economic activity. In our view, the economic policy has done quite a good job referring to what the ECB has done by floating markets with liquidity and doing everything in its power. The economic policy on the fiscal side has worked quite well, for instance, in Germany and other countries in Europe. Nevertheless, in a lot of European countries the consolidation process is on the way and is still quit fragile, thus we cannot exclude another drop back for the European economy as a whole.

In general, we expect that the Eurozone economy will shrink in the year of 2013, due to dropdown in the economic activity. However, we forecast that we are likely to have a slight increase in the economic activity next year, which would mean that real GDP could rise compared to year 2013 by about 1%. We will have shrinkage in the average of 2013 of about -0.4%/-0.5% and the real GDP will rise by about 1% in the upcoming year. Nevertheless, it is not enough to return to the level of economic activity before the crisis.

It has been decided that the ECB as the institution that will take care of the big European banks. We will not have bailout system that seems to be dubious, as for instance the idea that German tax payers have to pay for Spanish banks, which is very much discussed topic in Germany. It is a highly important issue from a political point of view. The responsible institutions will develop a clear set of rules that can prevent European banks not only from difficulties in general but also from uncontrolled problems.