The German government’s panel of independent economic advisers forecast Wednesday that Europe’s biggest economy will shrink by 0.2% next year.
The five-member panel’s report came after official figures late last month showed unexpected growth in the third quarter, thanks to private spending.
But a weak winter, with gross domestic product declining in the last months of the year and in the first three months of next year, is still widely expected. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is one technical definition of recession, but the 19-country euro area has a body that also uses a broader set of data including employment numbers and depth of the economic decline to determine when a recession occurs.
