Davos rings with palpable hope eurozone is edging away from crisis

There is a palpable sense of hope at the annual Davos World Economic Forum that the eurozone is edging away from the brink of catastrophe.

Nonetheless, business leaders say Europe’s woes are still holding back a global recovery. A growth strategy is the missing ingredient in the policy cocktail that eurozone leaders are mixing to save the currency bloc from break-up. Without recovery, re-election will be tough for leaders in Europe and beyond this year.

Part of the growth problem is that Germany insists other eurozone states must pursue the kind of structural reforms that helped it regain competitiveness in the last decade, even if these risk sending weaker economies into a deflationary spiral.