By Agence France-Presse

BRUSSELS — New car sales in Europe slumped 14.5 percent in October, the European automakers association ACEA announced Friday, as the global financial crisis plunges the region into recession.

The figures marked the sixth consecutive monthly fall in new car registrations which were also down 5.4 percent for the 10 months to October.

“Reflecting the financial and economic crisis, new car registrations have now decreased for six consecutive months,” the association said in a report.

The figures were released amid expectations that the 15-nation eurozone would be formally declared in recession later in the day.

The European Commission was swift to respond to the disappointing car figures.

Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said that the EU is ready to take action at the World Trade Organisation if it judges that US aid for its struggling auto industry is “illegal.”

The US Congress approved an aid package worth 25 billion dollars in September to help the auto industry invest in new generation technology but no timetable was fixed for payments to be made.

Meanwhile, European automakers — who have cast an envious eye at the US plan and called for similar action at home — have been forced to close factories and cut jobs.

“We are looking at the (US) plan. The plan has not yet been made official but certainly, if it amounts to illegal state aid we will act at the WTO,” Barroso told Europe 1 radio when asked about the US bailout package.

Since then, problems have mounted as the global financial crisis has savaged the economy, with all three US majors — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — clamouring for help in the same way as Washington has bailed out the US banks.

The economic news coming out of Europe was making equally gloomy reading.

Official figures released Friday in Rome showed the Italian economy in recession — defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction.

A day earlier Europe’s biggest economy Germany declared itself in recession while the French economy only narrowly escaped the “R” word.

A reecssion announcement on the eurozone as a whole was expected later Friday.

In total, 1.134 million new cars were registered in Europe in October in the 28 countries reviewed — the 27 EU member states, minus Cyprus and Malta but plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.

Only the Austrian car market avoided the sales drop, while Ireland and Spain crashed 54.6 percent and 40 percent respectively in October compared to the same month last year. The Spanish figures were at their lowest for 13 years.

In response to waning sales, French car maker PSA Peugeot-Citroen has ordered a 30 percent production cut while Renault is to temporarily shut down several factories in France and Europe as the global financial crisis undercuts the economy.

The bad news on car sales news has had ramifications beyond the auto industry.

Last month, steel giant ArcelorMittal announced it was shutting down furnaces at a dozen sites across Europe for at least six months in response to a sharp fall in demand from crisis-hit carmakers.

The car registration figures were less grim, according to the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), in the mainly eastern European new member state markets, with sales down 3.3 percent in October.

The Polish market was up 12.3 percent over October 2007.

All main carmakers saw their sales drop with Chrysler, already a relatively small player in Europe, seeing its figures fall by a whopping 49.4 percent.

General Motors, the biggest US carmaker, saw its October sales fall by a little over 25 percent.

Germany’s Volkswagen sold the most cars in Europe last month, with 249,948 new vehicles registered, a drop of 7.6 percent over the same month last year.