February 2018 seasonally adjusted construction production in the EU inched down 0.8 percent compared to January, when it had recorded 1.1 percent drop month-on-month, data released by Eurostat on Wednesday showed.

The decrease is attributed to lower activity in civil engineering projects, which decreased by 2.7 percent, and a slight drop in building construction production, by 0.2 percent.

By country, the largest month-on-month drops in construction production among countries with available data were in Bulgaria (by 14 percent), Slovenia (13.1 percent) and Hungary (5 percent). On the other hand, the biggest growth was recorded in Romania (4.7 percent), followed by France (2.7 percent) and Spain (0.9 percent). The report had no data on Croatia, as it is among member states which do not report monthly construction production levels.

In year-on-year terms, February 2018 production was down 0.1 percent compared to the same period the year before, after having jumped by 5 percent in January. This was largely thanks to a 3.8 percent drop in civil engineering, while building construction had posted a modest 0.6 percent growth. 

Compared to February 2017, the biggest growth in construction activity was in Poland (by 31.3 percent), Hungary (26.1 percent) and Romania (10.6 percent). Countries with biggest decrease in construction production were Belgium (5.3 percent), the United Kingdom (3.9 percent) and France (3 percent).