Europe's economy is beginning to motor as 2005 comes to an end, but as 2006 dawns people may remember this year too started with a spark followed by ignition failure.
Stock markets are higher than they've been for three-and-the-half years, governments are raising national GDP forecasts and economists were shutting down their computer spreadsheets for Christmas in the belief that next year will be a better one for growth.
"The region now looks well placed to experience a decent business cycle upswing next year, breaking it out of the rut that it has been in since 2000," JP Morgan economist David Mackie said in an end-of-year note to clients.
The European Commission this week said its prediction of 1.9 per cent expansion in eurozone gross domestic product next year could even be topped - by accident more than design - because of a recent acceleration in world growth and demand.
While unspectacular beside Chinese growth rates of closer to 10 per cent or US growth of double the European pace, that is a notable improvement from this year's estimated growth aggregate of 1.3 per cent for the 12 nations that use the euro.
Business confidence has been rising, as monthly surveys from Germany, Italy and Belgium showed last week. But industry output is still patchy, and households are reluctant to spend at a time of stubbornly high unemployment. The euro's slide of a more than 10 per cent versus the dollar this year eased the travails of exporters who have cut jobs to keep costs down in a cut-throat battle on world markets where China's presence is felt more with each day.
But France, which has fared relatively better than Germany and Italy overall in the downturn that followed the 2000 dot-com blowout, showed how precarious the climate remains, publishing a survey that said confidence there dipped in December. Output in manufacturing and the much larger services sector has been picking up nonetheless, according to monthly surveys of corporate purchasing managers that are considered to be a good up-to-the-minute gauge of what is happening.
Again, however, European data on October industrial output, the most recent there is on that front, disappointed economists when published last week.
It tempered hopes of a solid GDP run in the final quarter of 2005 after a 0.6 per cent third-quarter increases which surprised people on the upside.
That, though, is only half the story. What happens beyond the next month or two depends also on whether households start to spend more, especially in Germany, where the economy is flying on one engine - exports - for the moment.
Investors are happy to pump money into European shares since firms have been protecting profits by axing staff or not hiring, but unemployment at close to 10 per cent in countries such as Germany has done little to restore consumer confidence on the scale needed to get them spending.
"Consumer spending is the weak link of the recovery," says Veronique Riches-Flores, an economist at Societe Generale bank.
"The likelihood of a turnaround will depend on the creation of a virtuous circle, following on from a recovery in exports and, more recently, in capital spending in Germany and Italy."
She, like many others, believes a recovery is underway, but that renewed dollar weakness as well as a no-show from German consumers are potential stumbling blocks in the year ahead.
Eurozone GDP began 2005 with quarterly growth of 0.3 per cent in the first three months of the year, and 0.4 per cent in the second quarter, according to the most up-to-date data from the Eurostat statistics office.
Even that looked impressive after the economy came close to total standstill in the last quarter of 2004.
Earlier this year, the first quarter recovery was thought to have been nearly twice as strong, until it became clear that Germany's export figures had been slightly overestimated and that Italy was on the brink of recession.