(Bloomberg) -- Damage from the coronavirus slammed into the European Union’s fastest-growing region in the first quarter, with more pain coming as the bloc’s eastern members head for the worst recession since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

While the countries stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea averted the record downturns suffered by big western European states, the shutdown of factories, shops and services hammered company profits and drove unemployment higher.

Data on Friday will show Poland, Hungary and Romania saw economic growth halved from the end of 2019, while the Czech and Slovak economies shrank in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg surveys.

The euro-area, the key destination for the region’s exports, plunged into record contraction in the first quarter, highlighting the challenges for eastern European manufacturers.

Output at Skoda Auto, the largest Czech company and a key gauge of the country’s manufacturing health, dropped by more than 100,000 cars during a month-long shutdown, according to board member Klaus-Dieter Schurmann. Total car deliveries fell by about a quarter from a year earlier in the first three months.

“We’re feeling very a strong economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the necessary measures adopted to suppress it,” Schurmann said.

Forecasts for the looming recession in the EU’s former communist members evoke memories of the region’s painful transformation more than three decades ago. At their worst, cumulative GDP contractions ranged from about 13% in Poland and then-Czechoslovakia to a quarter of output in Bulgaria and Romania and as much as 40% in Baltic states.

U-Shaped Recovery

Even Poland, seen by the EU executive arm as the most resilient to the coronavirus among the bloc’s 27 economies, is expected to shrink 4.3% this year.

Still, as lockdown measures are being lifted across the continent, officials are sounding more frequent forecasts of a recovery that won’t be delayed beyond 2020.

Skoda’s rival Dacia Renault Romania is already seeing a recovery in orders in Germany, France and the U.K., according to its CEO Christophe Dridi.

“I expect a U-shaped recovery in Hungary,” said Sandor Csanyi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s largest lender. “If the euro area recovers relatively quickly then Hungary will too.”

Eastern EU economies will probably continue outpacing western Europe after the pandemic subsides, as they’re still in catch-up phase, according to Beata Javorcik, the EBRD’s chief economist. They also reacted faster than countries including France, Spain and the U.K., which has led to significantly fewer deaths from the virus.

“They got hit by Covid later, so they had the benefit of seeing what was happening in Italy, prior to experiencing Covid themselves,” Javorcik said. “So when Covid crossed their borders they took early and very decisive action.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.