{"id":437447,"date":"2026-09-03T15:24:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T08:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/euro-area-business-activity-keeps-steadier-in-august-reaffirms-ecb-policy-pathway-437447\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T15:24:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T08:24:03","slug":"euro-area-business-activity-keeps-steadier-in-august-reaffirms-ecb-policy-pathway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/euro-area-business-activity-keeps-steadier-in-august-reaffirms-ecb-policy-pathway-437447\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro area business activity keeps steadier in August, reaffirms ECB policy pathway"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">A quick catch-up of the PMI prints that we got for today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spain August services PMI: 57.8 (previously 58.3)<\/li>\n<li>Spain August composite PMI: 55.8 (previously 56.5)<\/li>\n<li>Italy August services PMI: 55.2 (previously 52.5)<\/li>\n<li>Italy August composite PMI: 53.6 (previously 52.5)<\/li>\n<li>France August final services PMI: 48.0 (previously 49.6)<\/li>\n<li>France August final composite PMI: 48.5 (previously 49.4)<\/li>\n<li>Germany August final services PMI: 49.7 (previously 49.8)<\/li>\n<li>Germany August final composite PMI: 51.8 (previously 51.3)<\/li>\n<li>Eurozone August final services PMI: 51.6 (previously 51.7)<\/li>\n<li>Eurozone August final composite PMI: 52.0 (previously 52.0)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Looking to the overall euro area estimates, we can see that private\u00a0sector business activity growth kept<br \/>\npace with that seen in July, which was the fastest in eight<br \/>\nmonths.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The details show that both output and new\u00a0order inflows increased<br \/>\nat the same solid pace as recorded in July, though the\u00a0August improvement in demand was the joint-strongest<br \/>\nsince November last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Besides that, employment expanded for the first time in the year-to-date, supported by another month of solid and broad-based sales growth.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">As for price pressures, they were once again more stable with input<br \/>\ncost pressures nudging down a fraction and output prices<br \/>\nincreasing at the same pace as in July.\u00a0However, inflation<br \/>\nrates remained high by historical standards and were above<br \/>\nthose seen immediately prior to the US-Iran conflict.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">That continues to signal that inflation risks are still present, but at least not spiraling out of control for now. But as the US-Iran conflict rages on for longer, the risks of higher price pressures becoming more embedded into inflation expectations is something that the ECB will have to be mindful of.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">As such, the central bank will look to raise interest rates again this month in order to position themselves better for the inflation battle that is to come. And the data above today will not distract from that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quick catch-up of the PMI prints that we got for today: Spain August services PMI: 57.8 (previously 58.3) Spain August composite PMI: 55.8 (previously 56.5) Italy August services PMI: 55.2 (previously&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}