Comparing the fourth quarter of 2022 with the third quarter of 2022, among Member States for which data are available, the highest increases in bankruptcy declarations were observed in Luxembourg (+71.8 %), Spain (+59.5 %) and Hungary (+41.6 %). The largest decreases in the number of declarations of bankruptcies were recorded in Latvia (-36.2 %), Lithuania (-25.4 %) and Cyprus (-13.4 %).
However, in Latvia the number of new business registered also declined by 1.6% from the third to the fourth quarter.
Across the EU as a whole, the number of bankruptcy declarations increased substantially in the fourth quarter of 2022 (+26.8% compared with the previous quarter) and reached the highest levels since the start of the data collection in 2015. The number of bankruptcy declarations increased during all four quarters of 2022.
When it comes to registrations of new businesses, these decreased slightly by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with the previous quarter. Generally, in all four quarters of 2022, business registrations levels were higher than during the pre-COVID pandemic period 2015-2019.