EU Economy: Weak EU growth and Covid-hit China raise prospect of global downturn - by Martin Arnold and Valentina Romei

New data on Friday showed that the Russian invasion is weighing on Europe’s economy, pushing up energy and food prices, worsening supply bottlenecks for manufacturers as well as sapping business and consumer confidence.

The disappointing news came a day after the US announced that its economy suffered an unexpected 0.4 per cent quarterly contraction, while worries about the impact of severe Covid-19 lockdowns in China caused the steepest monthly fall in the renminbi on record.

The Chinese currency has fallen 4.2 per cent this month to about Rmb6.6 per dollar, the biggest drop since the end of its US dollar peg, which was in place from 1994 to 2005. The fall is greater than a one-off devaluation by the Chinese central bank in 2015 that rattled global markets and a tumble in 2018 during the US-China trade war under the Trump administration.

Economists said the combination of weak global growth, soaring commodity prices and a series of expected interest rate rises by western central banks — including an unusually large 0.5 percentage point hike by the US Federal Reserve that could come next week — would spell trouble for the global economy.

“The world is in really bad shape,” said Erik Nielsen, chief economics adviser at UniCredit. “Particularly in Europe, where we have entered stagflation now.” He predicted that the eurozone was heading for a “double whammy” of an economic downturn and rising borrowing costs as the European Central Bank was likely to raise interest rates as early as July.

Read more at: Weak EU growth and Covid-hit China raise prospect of global downturn | Financial Times

EU: Asylum applications in the EU drop significantly according to EASO - by Irene Kostaki

A significant drop in the number of asylum applications in the EU has been seen by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), according to its annual report, published on June 18.

According to the data published, migratory pressure decreased for the second year in a row throughout 2017 on the eastern and central Mediterranean migration routes. An unprecedented upsurge, however, was seen on the western Mediterranean route. The EU’s asylum office counted 728,470 applications for international protection in 2017, a 44% drop from the 1.3 million applications in 2016.

While the overall number of asylum applications registered in 2017 dropped, some countries still noted considerable increases. Syria (15%), Iraq (7%) and Afghanistan (7%) remained the top three countries of origin of applicants in the EU. These were followed by Nigeria, Pakistan, Eritrea, Albania, Bangladesh, Guinea, and Iran. Syrian asylum seekers numbered 108,020 in 2017, a 68.4% decrease since 2016.

The latest figures for the first four months of 2018 highlight a further drop in the number of applications submitted, as between January and April saw approximately 197,000 individuals seeking international protection in the EU. The number was a far a lower number than in the same period in 2015, but higher than the pre-crisis levels of 2014.

The decrease in the number of applications lodged in the EU was distributed across most citizenships of origin to different extents, but with some noteworthy exceptions. In particular, nationals of Venezuela and Georgia have been increasingly applying for asylum in far higher numbers since 2017, increasing by 75 % and 133 %, respectively. The number of Georgian applicants has skyrocketed since the small post-Soviet state was given a visa-free travel regime with the Schengen Zone in 2017.

Read more: Asylum applications in the EU drop significantly according to EASO