The European Commission today raised its growth forecasts in the euro zone for the second and third quarters of 2006 to a range of between 0.5 and 0.9%.
The commission, the European Union's executive body, also predicted that growth among the 12 nations using the euro single currency would fall between 0.4 and 1% in the last three months of the year.
In its last set of forecasts, on April 12, the commission had put growth in the second quarter at between 0.3 and 0.8%, and said that it would range from 0.2 and 0.8% in the third quarter.
'The projections support the outcome of the commission's spring economic forecasts published earlier in May,' the Commission said in a statement.
