Eurostat has published the quarterly national accounts for the EU/Euro-zone; this shows the estimates of growth to be unchanged from the previous release at +0.4% for the EU and +0.2% in the Euro-zone. Similarly, the growth rates for 2024 are unchanged at +1.0% for the EU, with the Euro-zone at +0.9%.
However, it should be noted that the trends for the second half of last year are affected by strong growth being recorded in Ireland which had quarter-on-quarter increases of +4.1% in Q3 and +3.6% in Q4. We have discussed this distortion before and it is also a factor in the industrial production data in our other note this week; it arises because of the impact of the activities of multi-national companies, a number of whom have their headquarters in Ireland for tax reasons.
The quarter-on-quarter data is also important in assessing whether an economy is in recession – this is defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction; within the EU, two countries meet this definition in Austria (-0.2% and -0.4% for Q3-24 and Q4-24 respectively) and Malta (-0.6% and -0.7%). There are 2 other countries whose economy contracted in the final period of 2024 – France (-0.1%) and Germany (-0.2%); finally on the downside, Finland and Latvia recorded no change in GDP at the end of last year.
The short recession in Hungary over the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2024 ended with growth of +0.6% in the 4th period of the year. Excluding Ireland (see above), the strongest quarter-on-quarter growth was in Denmark (+1.8%) and Portugal (+1.5%).
You can get the Eurostat figures from their website at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Quarterly_national_accounts_-_GDP_and_employment or request it from MTA.