European Economic Growth Beats Expectations

A strong German economic performance helped drive better-than-expected second-quarter growth in the euro zone.

The combined GDP of the currency zone's 16 countries grew 1% from the first quarter, The Wall Street Journal said.

That's the strongest quarterly performance since 2006, and easily beat the 0.7% forecast by economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires.

"Today's numbers are a clear sign that the euro zone has coped with the sovereign-debt crisis better than expected," Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING, said in a research note.

Germany, Europe's largest economy, grew 2.2% in the second quarter, driven by a high demand for the country's exports. It was Germany's fastest quarterly economic expansion since reunification in 1990.