We'll hit bottom eventually. REUTERS/Marko Djurica Europe is under a huge amount of economic and political pressure, from the immigration crisis, to the potential fallout from Greece's debt deals, to Italy's credit crisis.

In addition, the China slowdown and dampened commodities markets are dragging on economic growth. That puts a lot of stress on central banks and their mission to stop Europe from breaking apart financially, and possibly politically.

But according to Mark Wall and his team at Deutsche Bank, we shouldn't be worried about what's happening this year — it's 2017 that will be crunch time for the European Central Bank (emphasis ours):

Our concern is not 2016 but 2017. On current forecasts the fiscal stance will be less easy next year.

Since it is the change in the fiscal stance that correlates with economic growth, unless current plans change the fiscal impulse threatens to become negative for growth in 2017.

Rising oil prices, geopolitical risk and the fading benefits of the ECB’s monetary policies as time passes will add to recovery headwinds next year. If the global economic cycle fails to revive, the pressure will mount for an easier European policy stance.

Inflation and growth are stuck at low levels in the Eurozone after years of near-zero interest rates. The ECB is already trying unprecedented forms of monetary policy, including negative interest rates, to tackle them.

The ECB left its deposit rate untouched at -0.40% at the end of April, following the latest meeting of the bank's governing council. Under negative interest rates, banks have to pay money to leave deposits with the ECB – something it hopes will stir the big lenders to pump money into the economy, rather than keep it back and reduce their own deposit rates, forcing savers to go out and spend or invest their money, helping boost the eurozone's rock bottom inflation.

Central banks are talking about using "helicopter money" – creating new money and giving it directly to people to spend on whatever they want.

The ECB is also planning to cut all of its main rates and extend its programme of asset purchases to €80 billion per month, including buying corporate bonds for the first time, having previously restricted bond buying to government debt.

However, many analysts, such as those at the Bank for International Settlements and the Economist Intelligence Unit, have warned that these measures are exhausted and central bankers are running out of options.

DB's Mark Wall believes that will require governments to step in with "fiscal easing." Fiscal easing is either extra government spending or letting deficits grow in order to avoid cuts in spending. Wall says that is already happening, and we are in the middle of "the largest easing since the coordinated response after the Lehman collapse":

If governments tighten their fiscal policies next year — as Wall is predicting — then Europe faces a storm: Central banks without monetary stimulus weapons, and governments without fiscal weapons, both at the same time.

One of the markets' most vocal strategists — Albert Edwards from Societe Generale — didn't mince his words about the ECB. In a note sent to clients by Societe Generale on Friday, Edwards said that he is "utterly depressed." He calls the ECB's QE programme quick fix "nonsense," and states wearily "I’'m not really sure how much more of this I can take."

The subject of Edwards' ire is the world's central bankers, who have "painted themselves into a corner with their overconfident rhetoric and monetary experiments."

So, if you think 2016 is shaping up to be a terrible year for Europe's economy, it looks like next year will be even worse.