After the publication of Romania's better-than-expected GDP growth for the first quarter of this year, EU statistics office Eurostat has just released its flash estimate for GDP changes across the EU in Q1 2013. The news isn't great: GDP contracted by 0.1 percent across the EU 27 and by 0.2 percent in the eurozone, quarter-on-quarter. Romania's estimate for quarter-on-quarter growth was above expectations, up 0.5 percent. Compared to Q1 2012, Romania recorded 1.3 percent GDP growth in the first three months of this year.

Romania's results are among the best in Europe; the fourth highest quarterly growth rate in the EU behind only Latvia, Lithuania and Hungary, which posted 1.2 percent, 1.3 percent and 0.7 percent quarterly growth respectively. Year-on-year, Romania ranked third for growth, again behind Latvia and Lithuania, with 5.6 and 4.1 percent year-on-year GDP rises, respectively.

Other EU countries with slight quarterly GDP growth were Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and the UK.

Comparing Q1 2013 with the same quarter last year, EU 27 GDP had fallen by 0.7 percent and the eurozone's GDP had contracted by 1 percent. Eurostat provides the US figures for comparison – 0.6 percent quarterly growth and a 1.8 percent year-on-year GDP rise in the first quarter of 2013.

editor@romania-insider.com