The eurozone economy outpaced expectations at the start of the year, thanks in part to exporters rushing out orders to get ahead of U.S. tariffs.
Gross domestic product, the value of goods and services produced by an economy, grew 0.4 percent in the first quarter, Eurostat reported today, well ahead of analysts’ forecasts of 0.2 percent growth.
GDP grew faster in the eurozone than in the European Union as a whole, which registered 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter growth. It’s unusual because EU-wide growth — buoyed by Eastern European economies that are catching up with the more developed West — generally tends to outpace the eurozone. That wasn’t the case this quarter, with non-eurozone Sweden stagnating and Hungary contracting by 0.2 percent.
