Brussels, 14 Feb. Economic activity in the euro zone grew by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2022, while GDP in the European Union as a whole remained stable over the same period, according to data published on Tuesday by the office. Eurostat statistics community.
The organization thus maintains its preliminary estimates, which confirm the economic slowdown but exclude for the moment the contraction between October and December of last year that many institutions expected, in accordance with the forecasts published yesterday by the European Commission.
Brussels concluded on Monday that the bloc has “narrowly” avoided a technical recession thanks to a better than expected behavior of the economy in the final stretch of 2022 which stems from the drop in energy prices and a greater dynamism in job creation, which led him to improve his projections for this year.
Even so, the euro zone’s 0.1% rise and bloc stagnation (0%) in the last three months of 2022 contrasts with the 0.3% economic growth seen in both zones in the previous quarter and they represent an increase of 1.9% and 1.8%, respectively, of the interannual rate.
This translates, according to the first calculations by Eurostat, into an annual growth corrected for seasonal variations of 3.5% in the countries of the common currency and 3.6% in the Twenty-seven.
Among the countries for which data is available, Ireland led the EU’s economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 with an expansion of 3.5%, followed far behind by Denmark, Cyprus and Romania (1.1 %), Slovenia (0.8%), the Netherlands. (0.6%), Bulgaria (0.5%), Latvia and Slovakia (0.3%), Spain and Portugal (0.2%), and Belgium and France (0. 1%) .
On the other hand, declines in activity were observed in Poland (-2.4%), Lithuania (-1.7%), Austria (-0.7%), Sweden (-0.6%) , in Hungary (-0.4%), in the Czech Republic (-0.3%), Germany and Finland (-0.2%) and Italy (-0.1%).
INCREASE IN EMPLOYMENT
Data from the European Statistical Office also indicate an increase in the number of employed people of 0.4% in both the euro zone and the European Union in the last quarter of last year, compared to the previous quarter.
These figures are equivalent to a slight acceleration in employment behavior between July and September, when the increase in the number of persons employed was 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, employment increased by 1.5% in the euro zone and by 1.3% in the 27, compared to year-on-year growth of 1.8% and 1.5% that had been observed in the previous quarter. in each of the areas.