The global recession stormed into Europe with a vengeance in the first quarter, data showed on Friday, pushing the economy deeper into the mire and casting a shadow over predictions the worst may soon be over.

The 16-nation eurozone economy contracted a record 2.5 per cent in the first three months of the year, the deepest slump ever going back to 1995, after shrinking 1.6 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, the Eurostat agency said. Compared with a year earlier, the eurozone was down 4.6 per cent while the wider 27-nation European Union economy shrank 4.4 per cent. Analysts had been expecting a contraction of 2.2 per cent on the quarter and 4.1 per cent on the year.

Eurostat figures also showed that the worst global slump since the 1930s’ Great Depression was now hitting Europe harder than the US, the epicentre of the storm, whose economy shrank 1.6 per cent in the first quarter and 2.6 per cent over one year. National data showed that Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, registered its worst performance since modern records began in 1970 with a contraction of 3.8 per cent in the first quarter.

The quarterly contraction in Germany, the world’s biggest exporter, was even steeper than the 2.2 per cent fall recorded in the final three months of 2008 and topped analysts’ forecasts for a drop of 3.2 per cent. The dismal German outcome was followed by other figures showing a first quarter contraction of 1.2 per cent in France and 2.4 per cent in Italy.

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