According to data published by Eurostat, the Eurozone slowed down to 0.2% on a quarterly basis and, year on year, to 2.1%. In both cases, Portugal is among the fastest-growing economies, but there is still only data from ten countries.

According to a report by ECO, the euro economies had grown by 0.8% in the second quarter, which slowed to 0.2% in the following three months. This is the weakest performance since the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in the second quarter of 2021 and indicators seem to point to a shift from a period of expansion to one of economic contraction in the fourth quarter. This performance can partly be explained by the fact that inflation rates continue to beat records and energy prices remain at very high values ​​despite the measures already adopted at the European level, which forces the European Central Bank to pursue a policy of increasing of interest rates, which ends up having a recessive effect on economies.

In comparison with the same period last year, growth in the third quarter was 2.1%, against 4.3% recorded three months earlier, a performance that met analysts' expectations.

Portugal growth

Taking into account the data from the ten economies for which there is already information, Portugal was the country that grew the most in year-on-year terms, with an evolution of 4.9% of GDP, followed by Spain, which grew by 3.8%.

But when the comparison is made in a chain, which allows a better perception of the rhythm of performance of the economies, Sweden is the country that grew the most (0.7%), followed by Italy (0.5%) and Portugal and Lithuania, both with a growth of 0.4%. But among these economies, trends are different, as Stockholm stagnated at 0.7%, Lisbon and Vilnius grew compared to the second quarter and Rome slowed down compared to the previous three months.

Eurostat data also reveal that some economies are already in negative territory in the third quarter. This is the case in Latvia, which contracted by 1.7% after zero growth in the second quarter, in Austria, whose GDP fell by 0.1%, against the growth of 1.9% three months earlier, and in Belgium, which also contracted 0.1%, after a 0.5% growth in the second quarter.