GBPEUR Holds Steady at 1.15 Ahead of Data

The GBPEUR exchange rate is steady at the 1.15 level on Tuesday morning as traders await a week of high level European economic data. Tomorrow sees German consumer confidence figures before the same country releases inflation and unemployment levels on Thursday.

The GBP v EUR is trading at 1.1501 at the start of the Tuesday session and it may be a quiet day ahead in the pair, unless there are political headlines.

EU is ‘yesterday’s news’ says according to think tank

A Senior Fellow at the Centre for Brexit Policy think tank, Catherine Mcbride, has said that the UK should not look to direction competition with the EU and should look further afield. The economist remarked that the EU was “yesterday’s news” and the UK should look to emerging markets, such as Africa and South America.

Ms Mcbride said: “I really don’t think Brexit Britain should be bothering to try and outshine the EU. We are not in competition with each other. The countries we should be looking towards are those in Asian areas, where things are growing ahead the rest of the world.

“South America is still up and coming and Africa has massive potential and is something the UK should be spending a lot more time on,” she added.

It was also suggested that the commonwealth countries would be a good fit for innovation due to their English language prevalence and similar laws and cultures.

The UK may be able to push forward with trade talks in the months ahead as the virus lifts, with politicians being distracted from the real job of positioning the economy for the post-Brexit world as the virus dominates policy and debate. The trade comments are important for the GBP to EUR as investors still cling on to the premium that the euro was given after the Brexit referendum. The two economies have followed identical paths since then and the UK is now getting a head start on reopening that could be important.

EU sues AstraZeneca over vaccine

The European Union said yesterday that they will launch legal action against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca over their vaccine delivery shortfalls, which the EU blames for hampering its vaccination efforts.

“The Commission has started last Friday a legal action against the company AstraZeneca on the basis of breaches of the advanced purchase agreement,” said EU spokesman Stefan De Keersmaecker.

The German economy will start a few days of economic data releases tomorrow with consumer confidence numbers. This may not shift markets too much, but the country will also provide updates on unemployment and inflation on Thursday. Friday will see GDP Q1 updates for Germany, Italy and the Eurozone and this will be a big decider of the path for the GBP v EUR exchange rate in the weeks ahead.

The GBPEUR could look to move to the 1.16 or 1.14 level this week with the data. Sterling traders are trying to protect the uptrend after an early-April sell-off.

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