Business activity in the euro zone accelerated last month as the bloc’s dominant services industry took advantage of a further loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, offsetting a near-stall in manufacturing output growth, a survey showed on Wednesday.
“The euro zone economy has shown surprising resilience in the face of the Ukraine-Russia war, thanks to a renewed burst of service sector activity as virus containment measures were relaxed further during April,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global. With restrictions to contain the coronavirus easing and life returning to some form of normality, optimism improved and the services business expectations sub-index rose to 62.3 from 60.8.