Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

    BRUSSELS, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- The euro zone economy shrank by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2008 mainly due to the continuous drop in investments, confirming previous estimates, the European Union (EU)'s statistics bureau Eurostat said Thursday.

    In the second quarter of 2008, the combined economy of the 15 EU nations that share the euro also contracted by 0.2 percent compared with the first three months.

    This denotes the euro zone economy is in a recession, as the phenomenon is broadly defined in technical terms as negative growth over two consecutive quarters.

    Battered hard by the so-called credit crunch amid the ongoing financial crisis, investments in the euro zone fell by a further 0.6 percent in the third quarter after a sharper drop of 0.9 percent in the second, while household final consumption expenditure and exports remained unchanged from the previous quarter.

    Currently, all of the three engines that power economic growth in the euro zone, namely investment, private consumption and exports, are losing steam.

    However, in year-on-year terms, the euro zone economy grew 0.6percent in the third quarter of 2008.

    The economy of the 27-nation EU also declined by 0.2 percent in the third quarter against the previous three months, but rose by 0.8 percent compared with a year ago.

    Among EU member states for which data were available, Slovakia recorded the highest growth rate compared with the previous quarter, at 1.5 percent.