Greece has the lowest rate of generating new enterprises within the European Union, according to Eurostat data released on Monday.

According to the data, Greece recorded the lowest rate of new enterprise births at 4.5%, followed by Belgium (6.4%), Sweden (6.6%), Germany and Austria (both 6.8%).

The 2017 figures show that the highest rates were observed in Lithuania (19.7%), Portugal (15.8%), Slovakia (13.7%), Hungary (12.9%) and Latvia (12.4%),

In 2017, the number of new enterprise births in the European Union (EU) as a proportion of the total number of active EU enterprises stood at 9.3%. This rate remained stable compared with 2016 (9.3%), but it was slightly higher than the rate recorded in 2012 (9.0%).

The employment generated by these newly created enterprises stood at 2.4% of total employment in the EU in 2017, ranging from 5.2% in Portugal to 1.2% in Germany and the Netherlands.

Compared with 2016, the largest increases in the enterprise birth rates were recorded in Finland (2.9 pp), followed by Slovakia (2.7%), Hungary (2.1 pp), Estonia (1.2 pp) and Lithuania (0.9 pp), while the highest decreases were observed in Malta (-6.1 pp), Latvia (-3.8 pp), Spain (-0.9 pp), Bulgaria and Italy (both -0.5 pp) as well as Austria and Sweden (-0.4 pp).