Hunch. On 29 October the European Central Bank said energy prices had already risen above its September forecast and that dearer borrowing was likely to weigh on growth.
The 2026 growth market resolves on the first Eurostat release with the 2026 annual figure, the preliminary flash estimate due on 29 January 2027, and closes on 1 February: YES if euro area growth for the whole of 2026 is from 1.0% to 2.0%, with exactly 1.0% counting as YES and exactly 2.0% as NO. Later changes do not count, and Reuters and the Financial Times settle it if the Eurostat page is down.
We looked for cases where Eurostat published figures for the first three quarters of a year while one euro area country's quarterly growth swung by 5% or more, up and down. We found four such years, from 2007 to 2025, and add 2002, when Eurostat's table had no quarterly figures for Ireland. In four of the five, the year's first figure was no lower than three quarters showed.