The EU’s fiscal effort was still far short of the U.S. government stimulus. And it showed. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reviewed the growth record of 2020, the results were sobering. In 2020, euro area GDP fell by 7.6 percent. That was a far worse contraction than Europe had suffered in 2008–2009 or in the worst years of the eurozone crisis. It was also worse than in the United States, where GDP contracted in 2020 by 3.5 percent.
