According to a preliminary estimate by Eurostat, the European Union’s gross domestic product decreased by 6.4 percent last year. Eurozone performance fell 6.8 percent. In the last quarter of last year, there was only a slight quarter-on-quarter decline in gross domestic product.
Data available so far show that the last quarter of last year was the worst for Austria. Its economy shrunk by 4.3 percent compared to the third quarter. Lithuania’s economy, on the other hand, fared the most, with quarter-on-quarter growth of 1.2 percent. Latvia recorded only a tenth of a percentage point weaker economic growth.
The European Union’s strongest economy, Germany, reported a 0.1 percent increase in output in the last quarter of 2020. According to analysts, this contributed significantly to surprising developments in the Czech Republic, whose economy also grew by 0.3 percent in the last quarter of last year, despite relatively strict anti-epidemic measures.
However, in the year-on-year comparison, all 11 European Union countries that have so far published their GDP estimates showed an economic downturn in the last quarter of last year. Spain (down 9.1 percent) fell the most, while Lithuania (1.3 percent) fell the least.
