The German economy, Europe's biggest, grew by "about a quarter of a percent" in the fourth quarter of 2015, compared with 0.3 percent in the previous quarter, the federal statistics office Destatis said on Thursday.

The rough estimate was made on the basis of overall growth of 1.7 percent for the whole of 2015, announced earlier. Destatis said it would publish its official preliminary calculation of fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) figures on February 12.