In a previous note, when there was only data for 12 countries, Portugal was in the lead, growing by 1.6%. Now, the country is behind Poland, which grew 3.9%.

In the global scenario, the Euro Zone grew by an average of 0.1% compared to the last quarter of last year, while the EU's GDP increased by 0.2%, a figure that was revised downwards compared to the 0.3% that had been indicated at the end of April.

As the INE had already indicated, Portuguese GDP grew by 1.6% at the beginning of the year, which was even a surprise in view of economists' expectations. The recovery was largely due to stronger-than-expected momentum in tourism and exports.

Only Poland is ahead of Portugal, which grew by 3.9% in the first quarter, compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. In addition to these two countries, only Finland recorded chain growth above 1% at the start of this year (1.1%).

This week the European Commission released the spring economic forecasts, where it revised upwards the projections for the Portuguese economy. They estimate that Portugal's GDP should grow by 2.4% this year, which is "twice the EU" level, as the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, pointed out.