The eurozone economy is gradually recovering and Germany is managing to avoid recession. The start of the year marked the exit from technical recession for euro zone countries and a glimpse of renewed dynamism. The third quarter confirms the economic recovery with a rebound in GDP of 0.4% in the Twenty, after having experienced an increase of 0.2% between April and June, even if this last figure is corrected downwards. In the case of the EU, the economy rebounded by 0.3% between July and September after growing by 0.3% during the second part of the year.
This is confirmed by preliminary data published this Wednesday by the European Statistical Office Eurostat, which shows that European economies are not recovering at the expected pace. For now, Eurostat is correcting downward by a tenth the growth of euro zone GDP in the second quarter, which increased by 0.2% between April and June and recorded a rebound of 0.4% between July and September.
Eurostat data also worsens the development of the German economy, which closed the second part of the year with a contraction of 0.3% instead of the 0.1% initially announced. However, he is more optimistic about its behavior between July and September, where it recorded a slight increase of 0.2%. In any case, the news is good because Berlin manages to avoid recession even if it does not escape the shadow of possible economic stagnation.
Spain once again ranks as the fastest growing country among the major economies in the Eurozone. It repeats the dynamics recorded during the first and second part of the year and records growth higher than that of the rest of the countries using the single currency, with a rebound in GDP of 0.8%, similar to that recorded between April and June and slightly lower than that recorded between April and June. than 0.9% at the start of the year.
The French economy, for its part, grew by 0.4% in the third quarter of the year, after having grown by 0.2% between April and June, a tenth less than what Eurostat had initially estimated . French GDP started the year with a rebound of 0.2% in the first quarter of 2024 and increased by 0.5% during the latter part of 2023.
Among the major powers of the euro zone, Italy reports a slowdown in growth, also in the third half of the year, after having done so in the second. Italian GDP recorded zero growth between July and September, lower than the 0.2% with which it closed the second quarter and the 0.3% with which it advanced in the first quarter of the year. Data that reproduces the closing dynamics of 2023, when Italian GDP stagnated.
From the data put forward by Eurostat, we can conclude that Spain is the third economy that experienced the strongest growth in the third quarter of the year, behind the 2% increase recorded by Irish GDP and the rebound of 1 .1% of Lithuanian GDP. The worst performance between July and September was that of the Hungarian economy, which contracted by 0.7%. It is followed by the contraction of 0.4% of GDP in Latvia and 0.1% in Sweden.
