The data mean France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy, is on course to achieve its target of at least 1 per cent growth this year, ending three years of stagnation.
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According to preliminary estimates released today by the German Federal Statistics Office, Germany’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew a seasonally-adjusted 0.3 percent in the third quarter of 2015, as was expected by economists, versus the prior quarter in which the economy grew 0.4 percent.
In the third quarter, there were 43.1m people in employment in Germany, 343,000 more than a year earlier.
However, on a year-on-year basis, German GDP rose 1.7%, higher than the 1.6% gain it registered in the second quarter but short of the 1.8% hike analysts had expected.
“In fact, the summer weakness of the German industry seems to be more substantial than only a vacation-driven soft spell”, he noted, pointing out that the emerging markets and in particular China’s slowdown has “finally left a few marks on the German economy”.
The Dutch economic growth remained stable in the third quarter, latest figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics showed Friday.
That’s weaker than the Q2 figure for Europe’s biggest economy, which was slightly stronger at 0.4%.
Consumer spending was the main driver behind the quarterly rise. It grew 0.3 percent.
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French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government is trying to loosen up labor rules to encourage investment and reduce unemployment, which has stayed around 10 percent for years.
