In its latest release of GDP data for Q4-2024, Eurostat has doubled the quarter-on-quarter rate of growth to +0.4% for the EU and +0.2% in the Euro-zone – note that the second release was, in itself, also upgraded from the initial figures. The growth rate for the EU economy in 2024 is now +1.0% with the Euro-zone at (+0.9%).
Although still relatively modest, the growth rates for 2024 represent a significant improvement compared to 2023 when both the EU and the Euro-zone only grew by +0.4%. This means that growth is slightly ahead of that for the UK where the current estimate is +0.8% for 2024 but this may get revised when the UK National Accounts are published at the end of the month.
We now have the data for 26 of the EU Member States (Luxembourg is missing) which shows that only 5 saw their economies contract – these were Malta (-0.7%), Austria (-0.4%), Finland, Germany (both -0.2%) and France (-0.1%), with Latvia unchanged from the Q3-23 level at one decimal point.
Of these, only Austria and Malta had seen a negative trend in the 3rd period of 2024, which means that they met the definition of a recession.
Comparing Q4-24 with a year earlier (note that this is different from the annual trend quoted above for the EU and Euro-zone), three economies were smaller than at the end of 2023; these were Austria (-1.2%), Latvia (-0.4%) and Germany (-0.2%) – in all cases, this pace of contraction was slightly slower than over the four periods to Q3-24. The strongest growth on this basis was in Ireland at +9.2% but this is distorted by the impact of the HQ operations of a large number of multi-national companies (for tax reasons); Excluding them, the list was led by Denmark (+4.1%), followed by Poland, Lithuania (both +3.7%), Croatia (+3.6%) and Spain (+3.5%).
You can get the Eurostat figures from their website at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/news/euro-indicators (7 March) or request it from MTA.