Overview

The GDP of the 15 countries in the euro zone fell by 1.5% in the final quarter of 2008 compared with a year earlier, according to the European Unions statistics office. The corresponding fall for all 27 countries in the EU was 1.4%. But thanks to the growth in the first half of the year, GDP still grew in 2008 as a whole, by 0.8% for the euro area and 0.9% for the entire EU.Britains industrial production was 5.8% lower in the three months to February 2009 than it had been in the previous three months, and 12.5% lower than a year earlier. This was the biggest annual drop in industrial output since comparable records began 41 years ago.