(CN) — The impact of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent restrictions in 2020 proved a central focus of the European Union statistics agency's 2022 business report published Tuesday.
Sophie Limpach, Eurostat’s director of business and trade statistics, explained in a forward to the 84-page report that the last few years have been far from typical.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions have impacted on almost every aspect of life in the EU (and further afield) since March 2020,” wrote Limpach. “Eurostat monthly data for 2020 and to a lesser extent 2021 show this impact. The most recent data for 2022 may be impacted by a wider range of issues, for example aftereffects of the Covid-19 crisis on supply chains and early impacts from the Russian military aggression against Ukraine and the related sanctions.”
Spanning the EU’s business, industry, construction, distribution, service and tourism sectors, the report shows how these industries have fluctuated over the past several years.
Tourism suffered one of the steepest declines and has proven to be one of the slowest sectors to recover. The number of nights booked at a tourism accommodation throughout the EU rose steadily from 2.2 billion in 2011 to 2.9 billion in 2019. But when the pandemic hit, the number of nights dropped by 50.5% down to 1.4 billion in 2020.
The tourism economy saw only a partial rebound in 2021, according to the report.
“In 2021, 1.8 billion nights were spent in tourist accommodation in the 27 EU Member States,” the report states. “This overall figure includes nights spent by domestic tourists (those travelling within their country of residence) and inbound international tourists (coming from other Member States or from non-EU countries). The largest markets in the EU were France, Italy, Germany and Spain, each recording 259–324 million nights spent in tourist accommodation.”
It noted that the largest increases were for hotels and similar accommodations, which went up 29%.
“Compared with 2019, in other words before the pandemic, the combined July and August figures for 2021 were down 45% for inbound international arrivals but up 4% for domestic arrivals,” the report added.
The report likewise noted a similar upward and downward trend in the rest of the EU’s nonfinancial business economy, which encompasses industry, construction, distributive trades and other services.
While Eurostat counted 23.2 million of these enterprises in 2019, the numbers suddenly plummeted in the beginning of the following year.
“This pattern ended abruptly in the first quarter of 2020 when the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and related containment measures was felt; an even sharper fall was recorded in the second quarter of 2020,” the report noted, adding that things thereafter turned around. “In the third quarter of 2020, the number of business registrations returned above the level recorded at the end of 2019. Thereafter there was a relatively stable development through to the end of 2021.”
The report noted as well that EU industrial production was 9.1% higher in 2021 than it had been in 2005, with some of the highest growth rates having been reported in Ireland, Poland and Slovakia.
“Across the EU, the industrial activities that suffered the largest impacts during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in March and April 2020 included the manufacture of: motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers; leather; wearing apparel; furniture; and textiles,” the report noted. “However, output for these activities rebounded strongly in May and June 2020.”
It also added that distributive trades, such as motor, wholesale and retail trades, saw their main economic decline during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in March and April 2020 and likewise recovered in May and June.
“The strongest decline among the distributive trades divisions was recorded for motor trades, as EU sales were down 55% overall; by contrast, turnover fell 20 % for wholesale trade and 19 % for retail trade,” the report said.
It added that the coronavirus had a particularly large effect on several activities that experienced a sharp fall at the start of the pandemic.
“Between February and April 2020, EU production fell 79% for travel intermediary services, 77% for air transport services, 69% for food and beverage services; the next largest fall was 20% for audio-visual activities,” it said.
The most stable nonfinancial services were water transportation, telecommunications, computer programming, consultant work, and postal and courier activities, the report said.
As of January 2022, EU output for travel intermediary services was still 49% lower than it had been in February 2020, air transport services were 28% lower and food and beverage services were still 14% lower.
Since data for the report included numbers reported by April 2022, the document noted that world conflicts may play a part in the most recent statistics.
“The most recent data for 2022 may be impacted by a wider range of issues, for example aftereffects of the Covid-19 crisis on supply chains and early impacts from the Russian military aggression against Ukraine and the related sanctions,” the report noted.
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