In the second quarter of this year On a quarterly basis According to seasonally adjusted data, GDP in the European Union and the euro area rose by 0.3 percent. Both while Compared to the same period of the previous year, by 0.8 percent in the European Union and by 0.6 percent in the euro area. GDP expanded – Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, revealed on Wednesday From the data serieswhich is roughly the same as their first estimate at the end of July.
In the first quarter, growth was recorded at 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter in both regions, while in annual comparison, the EU27 economies as a whole grew by 0.6 percent, while the 20 countries using the euro grew by 0.6 percent. 0.5 percent, so the growth rate in the former rose by 0.2 percentage points, while in the monetary union it improved by 0.1 percentage points.
In the meantime
The US economy grew 0.7 percent in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter, and recorded a 3.1 percent increase on an annual basis.
Moreover, the U.S. economy is expanding at a brisk pace, with statisticians measuring growth of 0.4 percent in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter, and 2.9 percent compared to the previous year.
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In recent years, the economies of the European Union (including the euro area) and the United States have moved roughly together, although the performance of the US economy has often been higher than that of the European economy, the difference has been only a few percentage points, but
Last year, US GDP moved away from its European counterpart, and by the end of 2023 there was already a 2.7 percentage point difference in growth between the two regions, unprecedented for more than a decade.
This trend seems to be “consolidating”, although the gap has narrowed – to 2.3 percentage points – but the US economy is still more prosperous than the European economy.
How does Hungary stand within Europe?
On a quarterly basis, the highest growth in the EU was measured in Poland (1.5%), Ireland (1.2%) and the Netherlands (1%), while the Polish economy also expanded the fastest on an annual basis – by 4%. It was ahead of Cyprus (3.7%) and Spain (2.9%).
On a quarterly basis, Hungary was also in the lead, down 0.2 percent.
Quarterly declines were also recorded in Latvia, Sweden (-0.8 percent) and Germany (-0.1 percent). The German economy is Hungary's most important export partner, so Germany's weakness drags the Hungarian economy down with it – this can be seen, for example, in the latest industrial data.
In a year-on-year comparison, the situation is actually better: our growth in the second quarter of 1.3 percent is better than the EU average, and overall – based on the available data – we are in eighth place in the ranking.
Employment growth is declining.
The statistical office also announced on Wednesday that in the second quarter, the number of employed people rose by 0.2 percent in both the EU and the euro area compared to the previous quarter – in the first three months of this year, the pace of employment growth was 0.3 percent. On an annual basis, in the second quarter of this year, the expansion in the EU was 0.7 percent, while in the euro area it was 0.8 percent – here too, a slowdown can be observed compared to the data for the first quarter (0.9 and 1 percent).
Employment expansion accelerated after the coronavirus pandemic, peaking at the beginning of 2022 – the number of people in work in the EU rose by 2.8% at that time, although there is still some way to go to recover. But in the past two years, the pace of employment expansion has been declining, and this year we are already below 1%, which was the case only in the early 2010s before the Covid pandemic.
