European Union statistics bureau Eurostat confirmed on Wednesday that GDP in the euro zone sank 2.5% in the first quarter of the year, over the last three months of 2008, with a 2.4% drop for Italy.
This was the greatest quarter-on-quarter fall since the euro was introduced ten years ago.
However, the drop was marginally less than the 2.6% decline recorded for the United States.
Germany saw the biggest fall in GDP in the first quarter, -3.8%, followed by Austria and the Netherlands, -2-8%.
In its report last month on the first quarter of 2009, Italy's statistics bureau Istat said that compared to the first three months of last year GDP plummeted 5.9%, compared to a drop of 4.2% the government had forecast.
The year-on-year drop in GDP for Italy was the worst since 1980.
