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In the first quarter of 2024, the number of bankruptcy declarations of EU businesses decreased by 0.8% compared with the fourth quarter of 2023. 

At the same time, business registrations were up by 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the previous quarter. 

This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article. 

Registrations of businesses and declarations of bankruptcies in the EU, Q1 2018 - Q1 2024, seasonally adjusted data, 2021=100. Chart. See link to full dataset below.

Source dataset: sts_rb_q

Business registrations increase in all sectors

Data show that the number of business registrations went up across all sectors of the economy. When compared with the previous quarter, the highest increases in the first quarter of 2024 were in education, health and social activities (+5.2%), transportation and construction (+4.1%) and accommodation and food services (+3.7%).

Different trends across the sectors of the economy for bankruptcies

While the overall number of bankruptcy declarations slightly decreased, there were different trends across the sectors of the economy. Looking specifically at bankruptcies by activity, when compared with the previous quarter, in the first quarter of 2024 bankruptcies decreased in 2 sectors: trade (-3.3%) and construction (-1.2%). The highest increases were observed in the transportation and storage sector (+15.2%), and industry (+9.1%).

For more information

Methodological note

Starting with this data release, the country coverage of the quarterly business demography data increased. Data on business registrations are available for all Member States back to reference period Q1 2021. Data on bankruptcy declarations are published for 26 Member States, also starting from Q1 2021.

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