European GDP Declines Slow in First Quarter

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The recession in Europe got “less bad” in the first quarter of this year, if that is any comfort to the millions of people who are out of work and tens of thousands of businesses that are struggling to remain open. If the contraction continues, no matter what the rate, it is a sign that any real recovery is quarters away, if not years.

Eurostat says of gross domestic product in Europe:

GDP fell by 0.2% in the euro area1 (EA17) and by 0.1% in the EU27 during the first quarter of 2013, compared with the previous quarter, according to second estimates published by Eurostat

In the fourth quarter of 2012, growth rates were -0.6% and -0.5% respectively. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, GDP fell by 1.1% in the euro area and by 0.7% in the EU27 in the first quarter of 2013, after -1.0% and -0.7% respectively in the previous quarter.

Not surprisingly, the worst of the damage among the region’s largest economies was in France (down 0.2%), Italy (down 0.5%) and Spain (down 5.0%).

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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