Here's the first reading on Europe's economy this month

It's flash PMI day in Europe, meaning Markit is releasing its monthly estimates of how it thinks the EU's economy is faring.

The overall picture is a cloud with a silver lining.

The overall flash PMI missed forecasts of 54.2, coming in at 54. (Anything above 50 signals economic growth, so the higher the better.)

European service sector PMI also missed estimates of 54.1, coming in at 53.9.

But manufacturing beat forecasts, coming in at 53.1 against economists who had forecast 52.8.

That was thanks to a surprise surge in the French manufacturing sector in December. Like the Eurozone as a whole, that was France's one silver lining in an otherwise downbeat set of data. The country is on a run of bad economic data.

Earlier on Wednesday we got estimates for Germany and France, the two powerhouses of Europe. Here's how they fared:

• Germany: slight miss for the service sector at 55.4 against estimates of 55.5; manufacturing as expected at 53; composite PMI at 54.9, slowing from November's figure of 55.2.
• France: A big beat for manufacturing, coming in at 51.6 against forecasts of 50.5; a miss for the service sector at 50.0, versus estimates of 50.9; composite PMI at 50.3, down from 51.0 in November.

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