The EU has sharply cut its growth forecasts for the euro zone as a whole, warning that France and Italy remain huge problems for the sluggish European economy.
In its autumn economic forecasts, the EU has predicted that output in the euro zone will grow by only 0.8% this year, instead of the earlier prediction of 1.2%.
The growth outlook for 2015 is also much lower, cut down to 1.1% from an earlier forecast of 1.7%.
But it has pencilled in an Irish growth rate of 4.6% for this year.
While today's figures show the euro zone economy avoiding a triple-dip recession for now, they will renew global concerns about its sluggish recovery from the euro debt crisis that nearly sank the single currency three years ago.
"The economic and employment situation is not improving fast enough," said Jyrki Katainen, the commission's vice president for jobs and growth in a statement announcing the bleak numbers.
Also haunting Europe is the danger of deflation, and while the commission believes prices will not fall outright, it said inflation will remain very low and also drag on growth.
The commission said inflation in the euro zone this year would sink to a "very low" 0.5% this year and rise only to 0.8% next year. Both forecasts are way off the European Central Bank target of just under 2%.
In its breakdown of all the EU member states, France and Italy stand out as the biggest problems for a struggling European economy.
Those two countries are under huge pressure from the commission to cut back on government overspending and push through reforms that Rome and Paris have promised but largely failed to implement.
In its dire forecasts, Brussels said the public deficit in France would surge to 4.5% of total GDP in 2015 and keep widening to 4.7% in 2016, making it the biggest in the euro zone.
These figures are way off the EU's limit on public deficits of 3% of output and if left unaddressed, could lead to the commission imposing humiliating penalties on the already fragile government of French President Francois Hollande.
Italy meanwhile is burdened with the EU's biggest mountain of government debt, and the commission expects this will remain more than double the EU's limit if 60% of output in the coming years.
Italy will have a debt of 133.8% of output in 2015 and slip only very slightly to 132.7% in 2016, according to the commission's forecasts.
"The slowdown in Europe has occurred as the legacy of the global financial and economic crisis lingers," said Marco Buti, the director general of the Commission's economics department.
The Commission data appears to avoid the relapse into recession that European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned EU leaders of at a summit in Brussels last month, but despite a slowly improving trend, indicators remain dour.
Inflation will be 0.5% this year, 0.8% in 2015 and 1.5% in 2016, still below the ECB's target of the 2% level it judges as healthy for the economy, while unemployment will barely budget at 10.8% in 2016.
The data is likely to support calls by economists and some investors for the ECB to embark on the kind of bond-buying programme of quantative easing that Japan, Britain and the US have employed to recover from the crisis.
But Draghi has told the euro zone it cannot just rely on the ECB, which is banned from directly financing governments, to help, and that countries such as France must reform to get more young people into work and help carry the burden of an ageing population.
For now, euro zone leaders are putting their faith in a proposed €300 billion fund to invest in projects to get the economy going, while calling on Germany, Europe's biggest economy, to spend more.
But the Commission forecasts Germany will post a budget surplus this year, a balanced budget in 2015 and another surplus in 2016, showing little appetite for more government spending.
