GDP of European countries in 2022

With a Gross Domestic Product of over 3.87 trillion Euros, the German economy was by far the largest in Europe in 2022. The similar-sized economies of the United Kingdom and France were the second and third largest economies in Europe during this year, followed by Italy and Spain. The smallest economy in this statistic is that of the small Balkan nation of Montenegro, which had a GDP of 5.8 billion Euros. In this year, the combined GDP of the 27 member states that compose the European Union amounted to approximately 15.8 trillion Euros.

The big five

Germany’s economy has consistently had the largest economy in Europe since 1980, even before the reunification of West and East Germany. The United Kingdom, by contrast, has had mixed fortunes during the same time period and had a smaller economy than Italy in the late 1980s. The UK also suffered more than the other major economies during the recession of the late 2000s, meaning the French economy was the second largest on the continent for some time afterward. The Spanish economy was continually the fifth-largest in Europe in this 38-year period, and from 2004 onwards, has been worth more than one trillion Euros.

The Celtic Tiger

The Republic of Ireland was the fastest growing economy in Europe in 2022, after reporting an annual growth rate of 12 percent. While the country has been pointed to as a success story in recent years, with a drastic turnaround in its fortunes since the Eurozone crisis of the 2010s, when it was among the worst hit countries in the EU, Ireland has also been criticized internationally for enabling the tax avoidance of multinational corporations (MNCs) who have set up European headquarters in Dublin. Ireland's growth rate is so boosted by the profit-shifting activities of MNCs, that the statistical category "EU ex-Ireland" (that is, the EU excluding Ireland) has become common in order to avoid the country upwardly biasing EU averages.

Europe's growth champions

Malta, Portugal, Iceland, and Croatia also reported high rates of growth in this year, with every country in Europe reporting some degree of growth, apart from Estonia, which was severely negatively impacted by the sanctions placed on its large neighbor, Russia. By contrast, almost every country in the European Union shrank in 2020, during which time the Coronavirus pandemic caused a shutdown of the European economy, with international trade frozen and consumer spending lagging. By contrast, European countries' economic challenge has moved from stimulating growth, as it was in 2020 and 2021, to controlling rampant inflation which has broken out in the wake of the pandemic.