European central banks have been under pressure to do more to boost growth in the wake of the global financial crisis.
But they have struggled to boost interest rates to keep pace with inflation, and the low level of economic growth is making it harder for governments to finance their spending plans.
“If you look at the ECB, they have been too slow to raise rates,” said Anthony de Bruyn, an economist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
A new report from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, shows the European Central Bank has cut its forecast for the first quarter of next year.
In a note, the agency said that while the EU economy is now growing at an annualized rate of 3.2%, unemployment is rising.
The agency said the unemployment rate was at 7.5%, up from 6.8% in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The rate is down from 8.5% in 2017.
Eurostat also said that inflation is now lower in Europe than at any point since the end of World War II, with the inflation rate at 0.5%.
The ECB has cut the size of its bond-buying program to around 1.1% of gross domestic product, from around 3% in 2016.
The program was supposed to target companies with the most to lose, but that has proven difficult.
The euro zone’s third-biggest economy has also been slowing its economic growth.
The euro zone added 1.9 million jobs last year, down from 2.2 million in 2017, and its unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 10.2% in 2019 from 9.6% in 2020.
Europe’s central banks, including the European Stability Mechanism, have been trying to lower borrowing costs by reducing the amount of money available to the governments of the 27-member bloc.
They also have begun to impose limits on how much the banks can lend to their private clients.
More:European leaders have been pushing the European Parliament and the European Commission to push for changes in the way European Union financial aid is structured.
But many politicians have expressed reservations about how far they can push reforms, arguing that they would only make the bloc more dependent on the United States.
The eurozone has been trying for months to boost its exports to the United Sates, China and Japan, but analysts have said the reforms have not worked.
