Key View

• Incumbent European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s confirmation as her party’s lead candidate in the June European parliamentary election comes as we expect the European People’s Party to defend its pole position in the legislature. 
• This is despite the growing discontent with European mainstream politics amid weak

Key View: Over 2024, we forecast total tourist arrivals to Azerbaijan to grow by 26.0% y-o-y to 2.6mn, increasing from 2.1mn arrivals in 2023. Azerbaijan’s 2024 arrivals will be at 82.9% of the pre-pandemic level in 2019, despite the double-digit growth over the year. We project Azerbaijan’s arrivals to continue to increase over the remainder of

We retain our view that the economy will not return to its pre-war size until 2031. By pre-war we refer to the size of the economy in 2013, before Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine’s National Recovery Plan (NRP) assumes that Ukraine will achieve growth of 7% or higher over the next decade. We believe the NRP, released in 2022, did not

Key View

• We anticipate an increase in political risk in Croatia over the coming months, as the country prepares to hold legislative elections by May, European parliamentary elections in June, and presidential elections in December. 
• The election campaigns are likely to be dominated by the still high cost of living, corruption, immigration

Key View

• The European Commission (EC) has published its recommendation on secure and resilient submarine cables and issued guidelines that under our view are set to increase coastal member states' intervention in the industry.
• Under the proposed recommendations, we note that there will be some degree of upside risk enabling highly

Key View

• Following full-year growth rate of 4.6% in 2023, we maintain our forecast of 5.0% growth in 2024 with risks weighted to the downside. 
• We expect that the National Bank of Georgia will continue easing monetary policy in line with moderating inflation, which will boost household consumption and business activity. 
• The Ankalia deep

Key View

• We retain our core view that following elections in Portugal on March 10, Portugal’s main opposition party – the Social Democrats (PSD) – will become the largest party in the Assembly.
• In spite of the recent Socialist Party (PS) centre-left government collapsing amid a corruption scandal, we still expect the PS to do well enough to

Key View 

• As we expect Russia to remain isolated from the West through economic sanctions, its economy will experience various transformations not least in the industries that drive its growth, but also its trading partners. 
• When comparing Russia’s growth with that of Ukraine’s over the next decade, we expect to see a more rapid structural

Key View

• According to GDP data released on February 29, Turkish economic growth accelerated from 0.3% q-o-q (6.1% y-o-y) in Q3 2024 to 1.0% q-o-q (4.0% y-o-y) in Q4 2023.
• Despite this performance – which was stronger than we had expected – we still think that Turkiye’s economy will enter recession in Q2 2024, after local elections on March 31

Key View

• Following a 0.3% real GDP contraction in 2023, we retain our forecast for the German economy to grow by 0.3% in 2024 and 1.0% in 2025, driven by a muted recovery in consumption while the industrial sector faces ongoing headwinds. 
• Production in energy-intensive industries remaining constrained will hamper broader output in 2024