Figures published on Friday by the official EU statistics office show that the increase in cost of labour in Europe in the fourth quarter increased by a similar amount to the previous quarter, but in Portugal those figures rose from a drop of 1.1% in the third quarter to a rise of 4.7% compared to the last quarter of 2016.

However, the biggest increases were recorded in Romania (14.3%), Bulgaria (12.2%) and Hungary (8.6%), while at the opposite end of the list there were slight decreases in Finland (-0.7%) and Italy (-0.2%).