publication
2025-08-14 11:30
The second quarter brought a slowdown, and so a not very hurried economic growth in the European Union. In addition, Poland fell from the position of the economic leader of Europe, but maintaining the position on the podium in the European Ranking.
In the second quarter of 2025, the gross domestic product of the European Union calculated as one economy increased by barely 0.2% compared to the previous quarter and was 1.5% higher than last year – Eurostat said on Thursday. The quarterly dynamics of the eurpkb was clearly lower than the quarter ago (when it was 0.5% KDK), while the annual dynamics decreased from 1.6% relative to 1.5% recorded in the first quarter.
After all, these are the results and so better than what we saw in 2022-23, when in Europe economic stagnation combined with very high inflation. However, from the beginning of 2024 in data on GDP we could see a delicate revival, with quarterly dynamics regularly 0.3-0.6%.
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Poland has fallen from the economic throne
The data published today were the first “regular” respect for gross domestic product for the second quarter of 2025. We saw the initial report for the second quarter at the end of July and pointed to only minimal economic growth in the euro area. At that time, however, we did not have the results for many EU countries, including Poland. Now Eurostat has given results for 21 out of 27 EU countries. Only the results were missing for Denmark, Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg and Malta – in most small economies.
From what we know, the highest growth of GDP was recorded in Ireland, where the economy was supposed to grow an impressive 16.2% yard. Only that it has been known for years that Irish gross domestic product statistics reflect not so much the state of the island economy but operations of tax optimization of global corporations. Hence, the results of Ireland can be omitted with a clear conscience.
In this case, Cyprus came out on the forehead of the Europkb ranking, with an annual increase of 3.3%. Bulgaria was the second with a real GDP growth by 3.1% in the last four quarters. Ex aequo with a score of 3.0% were Poland and Lithuania. But it was our country that recorded a greater increase in GDP in a quarterly terms, which decides this draw in our favor. It is worth adding that Eurostat gives results in an assembly approach. In Poland, however, it was adopted to give a seasonally unpaid result, which was 3.4%. So a bit more than the infected result of Cyprus. So there is a chance that in the third quarter Poland will return to the economic throne of the EU.
Spanish brilliant among the largest European economies, with an increase in GDP at 0.7% KDK and 2.8% yard. It is slightly less than in previous quarters, but still impressive for the stagnant standards of “old Europe”. The Italian economy shrunk by 0.1% KDK, growing barely 0.4% in annual terms. France's GDP increased by 0.3% KDK and 0.7% yard. In practice, this is stagnation.
But it's better than in Germany. The GDP of the largest economy of the Old Continent has shrunk by 0.1% KDK (after an increase of 0.3% KDK quarter earlier), but the annual dynamics remained in the plus and amounted to 0.4%. The largest economy of Europe has been in the structural economic crisis for several years and the forecasts do not indicate that this will change in the near future.
In terms of annual GDP dynamics, only Hungary (0.2%) and Austria (0.1%) presented themselves worse than Germany. In turn, the decrease in GDP relative to the previous quarter of Eurostat only recorded in Italy and in Germany (after -0.1% KDK). As a result, the so -called Technical recession, i.e. at least two in a row of quarters of GDP decline.
