France entered a recession in the first quarter this year with gross domestic product contracting 0.2 percent, after shrinking the same amount in the last quarter of 2012, the official INSEE statistics office said Wednesday. A recession corresponds to a drop in growth over two quarters. The news is further trouble for President Francois Hollande after unemployment hit a 16-year high earlier this year. Hollande's government is struggling to tackle the country's economic woes, with the president recording the lowest approval ratings of any modern French president.

First-quarter data showed the Czech Republic firmly stuck in the longest recession in memory while smaller neighbour Slovakia saw an uptick in output, official data in both EU states showed Wednesday. Both ex-communist states, which formed Czechoslovakia until splitting peacefully in 1993, are heavily dependent on car production and exports mainly to the crisis-hit eurozone. Bratislava joined the European single currency in 2009 but Prague insists it will wait until its ongoing debt woes have been resolved.

Hungary's GDP rose by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2013, the national statistics office KSH said Wednesday, ending the country's second recession in four years that began early last year. The increase, which exceeded analysts' forecasts, was due to growth in the construction and agricultural sectors, KSH said, and compares to a fall of 0.4 percent in the last quarter of 2012. Year-on-year, however, first-quarter GDP was down by 0.9 percent, KSH said. Final first-quarter GDP figures will be released on June 6, KSH added.

The German economy, Europe's biggest, got off to an unexpectedly weak start to the year, as it battled freezing winter weather, sagging exports and weak investment, official data showed on Wednesday. And at marginal growth of just 0.1 percent, the economy only narrowly escaped a recession, which is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.