The eurozone's economy shrank by 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter last year, registering the sharpest decline over nearly four years, the statistics office of the European Union (EU) showed Thursday.

The 0.6-percent shrinkage of gross domestic product (GDP) on a quarterly basis followed a 0.1-percent drop in the previous quarter, according to an Eurostat report.

For the year of 2012 as a whole, GDP fell by 0.5 percent in the single currency area, after an expansion of 1.5 percent in 2011, the Eurostat data showed.

The eurozone economy was mainly dragged down by Germany and France, the eurozone's top two economies, both of which saw output shrink.

German GDP decreased 0.6 percent in the last quarter of 2012 while France contracted 0.3 percent compared with the previous three months, said Eurostat.

For the same period, the figure for the EU's 27 countries was a decline of 0.5 percent quarter on quarter, with the bloc's second largest economy the United Kingdom contracting by 0.3 percent after growing strong by 0.9 percent in the previous quarter.

Southern European countries saw their economies falling deeper into recession.

Italy suffered its sixth consecutive quarterly fall in GDP, at 0.9 percent this time, while Spain, the eurozone's fourth largest economy, remained deep in recession after recording a 0.7 percent contraction in the fourth quarter.

Greece, which only publishes economic data on an annual basis, saw its economy fall by six percent in the last quarter of 2012 compared with the same quarter of 2011, as the country is still deeply mired in debt crisis.

The recession has spread to northern European countries. The GDP of the Netherlands, Austria and Finland all contracted during the fourth quarter, at 0.2 percent, 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent respectively.

Jonathan Loynes, Chief European Economist at the London-based economic research consultancy Capital Economics, deemed the eurozone's GDP contraction in the fourther quarter "bigger than expected."

"This underlined the fact that, while sentiment towards the region has improved, the hard news on the economy remains distinctly weak," Loynes added in an emailed note to media.

Loynes said a strong euro might have played a role in the sharp economic decline, as the German statistics office stated that exports and investment dropped "markedly", while the French figures also showed a drop in exports.

"This will no doubt fuel fears over the economy's vulnerability to the strong euro," he said.