France's Hollande anticipates zero growth FRENCH President Francois Hollande says he now anticipates "zero growth" for 2013, after the eurozone's second largest economy slipped back into recession. "It is likely that there will be zero growth in 2013," Hollande told a reporters in Brussels, shortly after his finance minister in Paris tipped 0.1 per cent growth for 2013. The Socialist leader maintained that France had come through the worst after sliding into recession in the first three months of the year. The eurozone as a whole, according to new figures released on Wednesday by the European Union, posted its sixth consecutive quarter of economic contraction - leading economists to label it the "weakest link" in the sluggish global economy. Hollande said the confirmation of recession for his country was "the announcement of something that had already happened, not something about to take place." "It is my view that we are past the worst," he said after talks with European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso focused on a summit of EU leaders back in Brussels in seven days' time. However, Hollande refused to entertain notions that France - the eurozone's second biggest economy, but on an increasingly divergent path from leading light Germany - was dragging Europe down. Is France a separate case? Hollande asked rhetorically, after the 17-state eurozone posted a 0.2 per cent contraction in economic output between January and March of this year, and a 1.0 per cent slide year-on-year. Hollande said the recession across the eurozone - home to 340 million citizens and the biggest tariff-free market outside the United States - could be explained by "the accumulation of austerity politics."