BRUSSELS (AFP) -- Eurozone finance ministers will size up looming threats to growth at a meeting today as evidence mounts that the record strength of the euro and oil prices are weighing on the economy.

The ministers are to also prepare a joint message that a delegation of eurozone finance chiefs are to bring to Beijing later this month amid growing European concerns about China's runaway trade surplus.
Ahead of the meeting over dinner in Brussels, the European Commission issued an autumn update of its economic estimates on Friday, forecasting that growth in Europe will be weaker than previously expected next year.
Warning that headwinds to eurozone growth were on the rise, the European Union's executive arm cut its 2008 eurozone growth estimate to 2.2 percent from the 2.5 percent projected in May.
""Clouds have clearly gathered on the horizon with this summer's turbulence in the financial market, the U.S. slowdown and the ever-rising oil prices,"" said EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.
Business leaders
But private-sector analysts and business leaders are increasingly focusing on the impact of the euro's record strength, which brought the currency to an all-time high of 1.4752 dollars on Friday, as a threat to growth.
""In our view, such moves have brought into question whether European companies can remain competitive and the likely impact on profits if such currency headwinds persist,"" Goldman Sachs strategists Hiten Savani and Peter Oppenheimer said in a research note.
The European employers association BusinessEurope warned Thursday that the euro's ascent was the single biggest threat to economic growth and urged politicians to take action.
""When we see the rhythm (of the euro's appreciation against the dollar) today, we believe that the political reaction will amplify,"" BusinessEurope president Ernest-Antoine Seilliere said. Eurozone exporters are becoming increasingly concerned that the euro's strength is undermining the competitiveness of their products on international markets, although it makes imports cheaper for consumers.
European aerospace giant EADS said Thursday that it would have to step up a cost-cutting plan at its plane manufacturing unit Airbus, which is struggling to compete with arch-rival Boeing due in part to the euro's strength.
With no appetite in most eurozone capitals for intervening in currency markets to weaken the euro against the dollar, finance ministers have instead focused their attention on China and the yuan's state-controlled exchange rate.
They are dispatching on November 28 and 29 Almunia, ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet and the chairman of their regular meetings Jean-Claude Juncker to lobby Beijing to allow the yuan to appreciate more quickly.
Their visit will coincide with an EU-China summit in Beijing, which is likely to focus on growing concerns in Europe that trade between the continent and China is increasingly lop-sided in the favor of the growing Asian economic giant.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the most outspoken critic of the euro's strength, is planning his first state visit to China just before the summit and has said that he intended tell Chinese authorities they don't need a currency ""so devalued"" to have a robust economy.
Eurozone finance ministers will be joined on Tuesday by their counterparts from the 27-nation European Union for talks focusing on how to finance the EU's troubled Galileo satellite network as well as the sticky issue of value added tax rates.