Heightened geopolitical risks threatens to slow down or even reverse the process of economic globalization of the past decades. Within countries, political polarization has increased. Longer-term global trends, first and foremost climate change, but also digitalization and demographic trends, add to the complexity of the environment in which global banks and firms as well as governments have to operate.
Euro area and the United Kingdom  The euro area economy had contracted at a seasonally adjusted and annualised rate of 0,7 per cent in the last quarter of 2001, but a gradual recovery is in progress with depleted inventories being rebuilt and international trade picking up.