Growth in the EU – The European economy has lost momentum – News

The eurozone economy recovered in 2021. But only until Omikron struck.

Towards the end of last year, economic growth in the eurozone slowed down considerably. The gross domestic product in the 19 euro countries grew by 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter. There are several reasons.

The effects of the pandemic are particularly striking. According to Delta, the omicron mutation spread rapidly across Europe. Numerous governments reacted and restricted economic life again, in some cases significantly, by closing shops and restaurants. This put pressure on tourism and private consumption. The companies also struggled with problems in the global supply chains, with bottlenecks in individual goods and rising prices for raw materials.

Robust: Portugal and Spain

According to the statistics agency Eurostat, southern countries such as Portugal and Spain have for once shown themselves to be particularly robust. Here the economy grew by 1.5 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in the fourth quarter. France and Italy also continued to grow. Germany is quite different: the largest economy in the euro zone shrank by 0.7 percent in the last quarter. The minus was even clearer in neighboring Austria.

Incidentally, the economy in the euro zone is likely to have grown by a good 5 percent over the past year as a whole. This after falling by more than 6.5 percent in the first year of the pandemic, 2020. This recovery was therefore not completely choked off in the last quarter, but merely slowed down.