2024-02-20 14:10:50
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 231 of the 242 EU regions in 2022, while 11 regions saw a decline, the European statistics office Eurostat reported on its website.
The region with the largest growth in GDP volume was Portugal’s Algarve (+17.0 percent). In second place is another Portuguese region, the Autonomous Region of the Madeira Archipelago (+14.2 percent), followed by the Southern Region of Ireland (+13.5 percent), Spain’s Balearic Islands (+12.5 percent) and the province of Brabant Walloon in Belgium (+10.9 percent).
The most significant decline was registered in the South-Eastern region of Bulgaria (-3.1 percent). It is followed by another Bulgarian region – the North-West, where a decrease of 1.7 percent was registered, followed by Corsica in France and Northern Hungary (both with -1.2 percent).
GDP per capita
Southern Ireland and Luxembourg had the highest GDP per capita in 2022.
In 2022, regional GDP per capita, expressed in purchasing power standards (PPS), ranges from 30 percent of the EU average in the French overseas department of Mayotte to 286 percent in Southern Ireland.
After Southern Ireland, among the leading European regions are Luxembourg (257 percent of the EU average), Eastern and Central Ireland (247 percent), Prague in the Czech Republic (207 percent), and the Belgian capital Brussels (196 percent). The high GDP per capita in these regions (Luxembourg, Brussels and Prague) can partly be explained by the strong inflow of commuters and some large international companies choosing the region as their headquarters (Southern, Eastern and Central Ireland).
In contrast, after Mayotte (30 percent), the regions at the bottom of the regional GDP per capita ranking in 2022 are Bulgaria’s Northwest and French Guiana (40 percent of the EU average each), followed by Greece’s North Aegean ( 41 percent) and the Bulgarian North Central region (42 percent).