The euro zone economy grew by 1.4% last year, less than previously forecast, and is now in "mild recession", EU officials said today.
The overall picture points to a ''double-dip recession'' within three years in the euro zone, which has been hard hit by uncertainty arising from its now easing debt crisis.
The latest growth estimate for 2011 came from the EU statistics office Eurostat, which had previously estimated 1.5% growth, after growth of 1.9% in 2010.
The office confirmed an estimate that output shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter and revised down growth for the third quarter from 0.2% to 0.1%.
The figures track a slowdown at least from the middle of last year and today the European Union's Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said in Paris: "The euro area is currently in a mild recession."
Recession is taken to mean two quarters of declining output in a row, so his remark points to a first-quarter 2012 figure which is likely to show that the economy shrank again.
The fourth-quarter growth of 0.1% was sharply down over 12 months from growth of 0.7% in the last quarter of 2010 in the 17-nation euro zone. Rehn's remark means that the euro zone is in its second period of recession in three years.
Over the whole of 2011 in the 27-nation European Union, gross domestic product expanded by 1.5% compared with 2.% in 2010.
In comparison, US GDP rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter and 1.7% overall in 2011. In Japan, GDP fell 0.6% in the fourth quarter and 0.9% overall in 2011.
The Eurostat data showed poor performances in the last quarter of 2011 for the various components of GDP, with household consumption declining 0.4% in the euro area and 0.2% across the EU compared with increases of 0.3% and 0.2% in the previous quarter.
Investment dropped 0.7% in both areas while imports fell 1.2% and exports dropped 0.4%.
Among the countries where date was available, only three of the 17 sharing the euro saw growth in the last 2011 quarter - Slovakia with 0.9%, France with 0.2% and Finland at 0.1%.
The sharpest falls were registered by Portugal with a 1.3% drop, Estonia with a decrease of 0.8% and Italy and the Netherlands, both faced by a decline of 0.7%. Figures for Ireland's fourth quarter performance are not finalised yet.
Today's figures also showed that German GDP fell 0.2% along with Belgium, while Spain registered a 0.3% slide.
