The euro area grew 0.4 percent after a flat first quarter, and the member state with the fastest quarter is the only one still shrinking on the year
Zero, then 0.4 percent.
That is the euro area across two quarters, on the preliminary flash estimate Eurostat published on Thursday. Gross domestic product was flat in the first quarter of 2026 and rose 0.4 percent in the second, seasonally adjusted, against the previous quarter. Across the European Union the same two readings were 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent.
Measured against the second quarter of 2025 rather than against the first quarter of 2026, euro area output was 1.0 percent higher, after 0.5 percent in the previous quarter. The EU figure was 1.2 percent, after 0.8 percent.
The country column
Fifteen member states appear in the release table, and the spread across them is wider than the aggregate suggests.
Ireland recorded the highest quarterly rate, at 3.9 percent. Lithuania followed at 1.7 percent and Sweden at 1.4 percent. At the other end, Belgium and Austria each recorded 0.0 percent. Spain grew 0.7 percent, Portugal 0.8 percent and Finland 0.9 percent. The three largest economies in the table were bunched: Germany 0.2 percent, France 0.2 percent after a fall of 0.1 percent in the first quarter, Italy 0.2 percent.
Eurostat states that the year-on-year rate was positive for fourteen countries and negative for one. The table names it. Ireland is 5.6 percent lower than a year earlier, while posting the fastest quarter of any state in the release.
Why Ireland does both at once
The Irish quarterly line, read across, runs 1.3 percent, then minus 3.6 percent, then minus 7.0 percent, then 3.9 percent.
Eurostat attaches a footnote to that line and it is worth quoting the substance rather than paraphrasing it away. The Irish flash estimate is categorised as a Central Statistics Office Frontier Series Output, and particular care must be taken when interpreting it, because it may use new methods which are under development or data sources which may be incomplete.
What the estimate rests on
The release is built from the data of 19 member states, covering 96 percent of euro area GDP and 94 percent of EU GDP. It revises nothing behind it: Eurostat states plainly that earlier quarters are unchanged in this publication.
Everything in it may move. A second flash estimate for the same quarter arrives on 14 August 2026, and fuller estimates including employment follow on 7 September and 20 October.
