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“Given that CETA [the Canada-European Trade Agreement] is in the works, there’s a tremendous amount of interest among businesses as to what this really means,” Peter Hall, chief economist at Export Development Canada, the federal credit agency, said in an interview.

“Should they be targeting the EU market in their strategic plans in a way that they have not done for? All those types of conversations are actually going on at the moment,” he said.

“So, the interest level, I would say, is high.”

As impressive as the latest export numbers are, they do mask recent troubling developments in the EU economy.

Growth in the eurozone has become fractured again and some of the biggest members are back in recession — leaving the overall economy of the bloc nearly flat in the second quarter of this year. The ECB is forecasting growth of just 0.9% growth for all of 2014 and 1.6% for 2015.

Also weighing on the mood of investors is the incursion of Russian troops into Ukraine.

And on Thursday, the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi responded to the renewed concerns, cutting interest rates to new lows and announcing plans for additional stimulus measures next month — in the form of purchases of asset-backed securities, similar to quantitative easing programs by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

Mr. Draghi told a news conference in Frankfurt that “the loss in economic momentum may dampen private investment, and heightened geopolitical risks could have a further negative impact on business and consumer confidence.”