Eurozone economy unexpectedly grew by 0.4% in the third quarter
Kyiv • UNN
Eurozone GDP grew by 0.4% from July to September, exceeding forecasts. Ireland led the way with growth of 2%, while Spain and France showed strong growth thanks to tourism and the Olympics.
The eurozone economy shows growth despite pessimistic forecasts: from July to September, the eurozone GDP grew by 0.4%, which is 0.2% more than in the previous quarter. According to UNN, this was reported by Rolitico with reference to Eurostat data.
Details
At the national level, Germany, Spain and France posted better-than-expected growth, while Italy's growth came in below expectations.
Ireland performed best, increasing by 2%. Spain also showed strong growth of 0.8%. This was helped by a surge in tourist arrivals following the end of the pandemic. Spain welcomed more than 64 million tourists in the first eight months of the year, the highest number since record keeping began.
The French economy also showed surprising resilience, growing by 0.4%, mainly due to the additional activity generated by the Olympic Games in August. In contrast, Italy did not grow at all due to a pronounced downturn in manufacturing.
Germany grew 0.2% for the quarter, missing expectations of a slight contraction. Statistics agency Destatis attributed this to strong public and private consumption. The latter has been difficult to track this year as the country has not released any retail sales data since the spring. But the latest consumer sentiment data seems to confirm Destatis' picture, with GfK's forward-looking index for November, released on Tuesday, reaching its highest level since April 2022. Both income expectations and, crucially, willingness to buy improved for the second month in a row.
However, Germany's surprise was offset by a significant downward revision to its second-quarter data, which showed a 0.3% contraction, more in line with continued weakness in industrial production and orders data in the period.
Hungary and Sweden contracted by 0.7% and 0.1% respectively in the third quarter, while the Czech economy grew less than expected, by just 0.3%.
Including non-eurozone countries, the EU economy as a whole grew 0.3%, unchanged from the second quarter.
Recall
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