Economic activity in the fourth quarter of the year expanded at a rate of 0.1% compared to the third quarter, when it had increased by 0.4%.
Eurozone gross domestic product (GDP) growth came to a complete halt in the fourth quarter of 2024, as the bloc's economy stagnated compared with the previous three months, when it had grown by 0.4%, according to preliminary data released Thursday by Eurostat, hours before the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) announces its decision on interest rates.
In the European Union as a whole, economic activity in the fourth quarter of the year expanded at a rate of 0.1% compared with the third quarter, when it had increased by 0.4%.
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, the euro area's GDP grew by 0.9% year-on-year, compared to 1.1% in the EU.
In addition, for the whole of 2024, average GDP growth in the eurozone is expected to have reached 0.7%, while the annual expansion in the 27 member states is expected to have been 0.8%.
Between October and December, the EU countries with the highest quarterly growth rates were Portugal (1.5%), ahead of Lithuania (0.9%) and Spain (0.8%), while the economies lagging the most were Ireland (-1.3%), Germany (-0.2%), France (-0.1%) and Italy and Austria (0% in both cases).
Among the largest economies in the bloc, Germany and France saw out 2024 with GDP declines of 0.2% and 0.1% respectively, while Italy, the third largest economy in the euro area, did not experience growth, and Spain stood out with an expansion of 0.8%.
"2024 has ended in stagnation mode again," summarised Bert Colijn, chief economist at ING Research, for whom "weakness is everywhere, while other major economies are showing growth" and only southern Europe remains "the bright spot" at the moment.
In this respect, he is confident that EU policymakers are realising this and recalls that the European Commission presented a competitiveness compass yesterday, although he warns that, if the new strategy is successful, it will only boost economic prospects in the medium term.
For the moment, the economy appears to be in decline and we do not expect it to emerge from it this winter, as early indications for the first quarter suggest that the economy will continue to hover around stagnation.
For his part, Riccardo Marcelli Fabiani, senior economist at Oxford Economics, points out that the weakening of growth in the fourth quarter does not mean that the timid recovery has stopped, although he acknowledges that the momentum is weak and the outlook remains one of a recovery at a moderate pace and dependent on some countries with a healthier dynamic that support the aggregate pace of expansion, among which the Spanish economy stands out.
FIRST INCREASE IN UNEMPLOYMENT SINCE MAY
On Thursday, the European Statistical Office also published data on the evolution of the unemployment rate in the Eurozone and the EU at the end of last year.
Specifically, the eurozone unemployment rate stood at 6.3% in December, one-tenth above the level of the previous month, when it hit its lowest level since the beginning of the historical series in 1999, which represents the first rise in the metric since May 2024.
The unemployment rate in the EU as a whole also rose by one-tenth, reaching 5.9% in December.
According to the European Statistical Office, at the end of 2024 a total of 12.97 million people were unemployed in the EU, of which 10.83 million were in the eurozone.
This represents a monthly increase of 94,000 unemployed in the EU and 96,000 in the euro area, while, compared to December 2023, unemployment decreased by 261,000 people in the EU-27 and by 266,000 people in the euro area.
The highest unemployment rates in the EU were in Spain, with 10.6%; Greece, with 9.4%; and Finland, with 8.6%. In contrast, the lowest unemployment figures were in the Czech Republic, with 2.6%; Malta and Poland, with 3% each.
For those under 25, the unemployment rate in the EU stood at 15% in December, two-tenths of a percentage point lower than the previous month, while in the eurozone it was 14.8%, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than in November.
In absolute terms, the number of unemployed young people in the EU reached 2.92 million in the last month of the year, of whom 2.35 million lived in the eurozone.
In the case of Spain, in December 2024 there were 2.6 million unemployed people, of whom 451,000 were under 25. Thus, the youth unemployment rate in Spain was 25.3%, the highest in the community bloc, ahead of 23.9% in Sweden and 22.3% in Luxembourg.
