Lithuania posts steepest quarterly GDP drop among EU states reporting third-quarter data
Eurostat figures show Lithuania's gross domestic product fell 1% in the third quarter compared with the second, the largest decline among the 20 EU countries that have published data so far.
Lithuania's economy shrank faster in the third quarter than that of any other European Union member state that has reported figures for the period so far. The data come from Eurostat, the EU's statistics office. Lithuania's gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of goods and services produced in the country, fell by 1% compared with the second quarter.
How other countries compare
Twenty EU countries have published third-quarter data to date. Among them, only France also recorded a contraction, with GDP down 0.1%. All other countries reported economic growth over the quarter. Across the 20 countries, GDP rose by an average of 0.5% from the previous quarter.
The year-on-year picture
Despite the negative quarterly result, Lithuania's economy was still 2.3% larger in the third quarter than in the same period a year earlier. That exceeds the average annual growth across the EU, which stood at 1.5%.
The two measures give different pictures: in the short term, compared with the second quarter, Lithuania's economy contracted, but over a longer span, compared with the third quarter of last year, it is growing faster than the EU average. The source does not give reasons for the quarterly decline.
