Reassuring news has come out of Brussels also on the GDP (gross domestic product) front. According to the EU Statistics Office, in fact, the GDP of both the Eurozone and the EU-25 increased by 0.9% in the second quarter of 2006, bringing the rise respectively to 2.6% and 2.8% over the same period of 2005. Brussels explains this performance by a strong growth of investments (rising by 2%) and by a healthy surplus in the import/export balance sheet (1.3% growth of exports in the countries of the Eurozone as against a rate of imports of 1.2%). Greece is the only country to present below zero growth (-0.4%). Over the last year it is Lithuania that has registered what can only be described as a boom in growth, with an increase of GDP equivalent to 9%, followed by Slovakia (6.6%) and Poland (5,6%); both countries however are evidently encountering serious difficulties in accompanying the growth of investments at home with the creation of new jobs for their own citizens. The European GDP data – slightly higher than those of Japan – remain however decidedly lower than growth in the USA which rose to 3.6% in June.
