Gradual recovery So far, the Greek sovereign debt crisishas never halted the recovery trend of theEuropean economy, which started a slowrecovery before the outbreak of the debtcrisis. This was confirmed by the EuropeanEconomic Forecast Spring 2010, issued onMay 5. After negative growth of as muchas 4 percent in 2009, it was predicted thatthe EU would embrace growth rates of 1percent and 1.75 percent in 2010 and 201 i,respectively, both being 0.25 percentagepoints higher than the prediction of theEuropean Economic Forecast Autumn2009.