Eurozone third quarter economy, growth of 0.4%... France suffers negative growth due to protests

The economy of the Eurozone (21 countries that use the euro) in the third quarter was found to have grown by 0.4% compared to the previous quarter.

Eurostat, the European Union's (EU) statistical organization, announced on the 30th (local time) that the Eurozone gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter was provisionally calculated to have increased by 0.4% compared to the previous quarter. It is a 1.3% growth compared to the same period last year.

Although the growth rate slowed slightly from the 0.6% growth rate in the second quarter due to inflation due to rising energy prices and the contraction of the French economy, this result, which exceeded market expectations (0.2%), means that the European economy has shown significant resilience overall despite rising price pressures and this summer's heat wave and drought, Bloomberg News pointed out.

The performance of major countries was mixed. Germany and Spain grew by 0.2% and 0.6%, respectively, compared to the second quarter, while France, which experienced large-scale violent protests nationwide, grew by 0.1%. In Italy, where radical protests took place in places such as Milan, the growth rate stagnated at zero.

In the Eurozone, Ireland had the highest economic growth rate of 5.5%, followed by Spain, the Netherlands, and Estonia with growth rates of 0.6%.

However, Bloomberg reported that euro zone policy authorities are not letting down their guard against a downturn in the economy due to concerns that inflation may spread beyond the energy sector and to other fields, and the unstable financial and political situation in France, the second largest economy in the euro zone.

Meanwhile, the economies of 27 EU member countries were provisionally calculated to have grown by 0.5% in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter and by 1.5% compared to the same period last year.