The British pound fell sharply against the euro on Thursday, the rebound of the British economy of 15.5% in the third quarter was not enough to reassure foreign exchange traders before a fourth quarter that will be weighed down by a new lockdown.

Around 10:00 GMT (11:00 in Paris), the pound fell 0.59% against the European currency, to 89.60 pence per euro.

While the United Kingdom experienced a marked increase in its economy in the third quarter, after its historic collapse of 19.8% in the second quarter, growth was already running out of steam in September (+1.1%).

"This shows that the recovery was already losing momentum even before new restrictions, and then a second lockdown, were imposed," analysts at Capital Economics commented.

To deal with the second wave of Covid-19, the government imposed a new one-month lockdown in England in November.

The pound had benefited at the beginning of the week from the announcement of progress on a vaccine against Covid-19.

But "the British economy still has a long way to go to get out of the hole, even once there is a vaccine," said Lee Hardman, an analyst at MUFG.

The euro gained 0.32% against the dollar, to 1.1810 dollars to the euro, taking advantage of the intervention the day before by the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde.

While the latter was concerned about the risk of an "unstable" recovery, she said that the institution's giant loans "should remain the main tools for adjusting our monetary policy".

While currency traders were already planning an ECB intervention in December, "Lagarde's comments have dampened expectations that the ECB can lower its key rates," Sucden analysts commented.