Eurozone economy stalls in second quarter as German GDP slips

Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight.

"The eurozone recovery never really got going, and now it appears to be petering out," said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a nonpartisan London think-tank.