Romania ranks second in EU in terms of economic decrease

Romania is one of the EU countries that registered an economic contraction in the third quarter compared to the time period between April and June.

According to the report published on Friday by European Office for Statistics (Eurostat), Greece is the only member state where the GDP dropped more sharply.

The data regarding the GDP in the third quarter do not include information about seven states members, namely Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden.

Of all these countries, Ireland is the only one that registered an economic decrease in the second quarter.

Therefore, the 0.7 percent decrease of the Romanian GDP in the third quarter is exceeded only by the 1.1 percent contraction reported in Greece.

The third country with a negative percent figure is the Netherlands, with a 0.1 percent decrease.

The EU as well as the euro area economy grew by 0.4 percent between July and August, and the most important growth rates were registered in Finland, 1.3 percent, and in Slovakia, 0.9 percent.

Comparing to the third quarter in the last year, the 2.3 percent decrease registered in Romania is exceeded only by the 4.5 percent decrease registered in Greece, while the EU GDP grew by 2.1 percent, and the euro area GDP by 1.9 percent.

Moreover, Romania and Greece are the only state members that recorded economic contraction according to annualized seasonally adjusted data.

Estonia registered the highest economic growth, 4.7 percent, but according to seasonally unadjusted data.

Slovakia’s economy grew by 4.1 percent, and Germany’s by 3.9 percent.

The Bulgarian economy grew by 0.3 percent in the third quarter compared to the previous one and by 0.2 percent compared to the same time period last year.

In Hungary, the GDP went up by 0.8 percent compared to the second quarter, and 2.1 percent compared to the third quarter in 2009.

Translated by: Raluca Mizdrea and Ruxandra Câmpeanu
MA Students, MTTLC, Bucharest University