The eurozone economy will grow by 0.7% in 2024, according to Eurostat's provisional estimate released on Thursday. In the last quarter of the year, the bloc's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 0.9% year-on-year, with Portugal recording the third highest rate.

According to the first estimate of annual growth for 2024, based on seasonally and calendar-adjusted quarterly data, GDP increased by 0.7% in the eurozone and by 0.8% in the European Union. However, Eurostat notes that the data are still incomplete and therefore subject to revision.

In the fourth quarter, the single currency economy grew by 0.9% year-on-year and that of the European Union grew by 1.1%. Among the countries with available data, Portugal recorded the third highest rate (2.7%), surpassed only by Lithuania (3.6%) and Spain (3.5%). Conversely, Germany and Austria recorded a contraction of 0.2% and Estonia of 0.1%.

Compared to the previous quarter, the Eurozone's GDP stagnated (0%) and that of the European Union rose by 0.1%. Portugal recorded the highest growth rate in the quarter-on-quarter comparison (1.5%), followed by Lithuania (0.9%) and Spain (0.8%), while Ireland (-1.3%), Germany (-0.2%) and France (-0.1%) saw the largest declines.