Euro, coins – illustration photo.
Brussels – The European Union's economy shrank by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to seasonally adjusted data, while it grew by 0.4 percent in the third quarter. After further clarification of the data, the statistical office Eurostat announced this in its report today. So far, he said the gross domestic product (GDP) of the twenty-seven member bloc has stagnated. The Czech Republic is in recession along with three other member states.
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In the countries paying with the euro, the economy stagnated at the end of last year. This, too, is a deterioration from the previous report, which indicated growth of 0.1 percent. Eurostat revised GDP growth for the third quarter to 0.4 percent, in the preliminary report for both blocs, growth was 0.3 percent.
In a year-on-year comparison, the EU economy grew by 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter, while growth in the eurozone was marginally stronger at 1.8 percent. In the third quarter, GDP growth in the eurozone reached 2.4 percent year-on-year, and 2.6 percent in the EU as a whole.
The Czech economy fell by 0.4 percent in the last quarter of last year after a decrease of 0.3 percent in the third quarter. It thus found itself in a technical recession, which is usually defined as two quarters of decline in a row. At the end of the year, three more countries were in recession, namely Estonia, Hungary and Finland. Year-on-year growth in the Czech Republic's economy slowed to 0.2 percent from a pace of 1.5 percent in the third quarter.
For the whole of last year, the economy of the eurozone and the entire EU grew by 3.5 percent. A year earlier, the euro zone showed growth of 5.3 percent, the economy of the entire EU grew by 5.4 percent.
For comparison – the economy of the United States in the fourth quarter against the previous three months showed growth of 0.7 percent after growth of 0.8 percent in the third quarter. On a year-over-year basis, the U.S. economy grew 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, after growing 1.9 percent a quarter earlier. Statisticians in the US use a different calculation methodology than in the EU.
