Lockdown measures hammer eurozone

The European Union's economy shrank by 3.5 percent in the first quarter this year, official data showed on Thursday, the first major indication of the devastation facing the bloc as a result of coronavirus.

As lockdown measures imposed from March began to bite, the eurozone suffered an even bigger contraction－of 3.8 percent－in the first three months of the year, the EU's official statistics agency Eurostat said.

The French economy officially fell into recession after contracting 5.8 percent in the first quarter, the national statistics office said on Thursday.

Even though the business closures and stay-at-home orders were imposed only in the final two weeks of the quarter, the drop-off in activity was a hammer blow that has put more than half of France's private-sector employees out of work.

It was the worst quarterly performance since the agency began charting French GDP in 1949.

In Spain－the eurozone's fourth-largest economy and one of the worst-affected countries by the virus－GDP shrank by 5.2 percent.

Even normally stable Germany, Europe's economic engine room, had its share of misery on Thursday as the jobless total soared from 2.3 million in March to 2.6 million in April.

Agencies via Xinhua