FRANKFURT, Germany

FRANCE and Germany continued to shore up the eurozone with surprisingly strong growth in the third quarter, data showed yesterday, but the global economic gloom is darkening fast, analysts cautioned.

The debt-laden euro area as a whole logged growth of 0.2 per cent between July and September, thanks largely to a pickup in consumer spending in Germany, the Eurostat data agency calculated in a preliminary estimate.

But while Germany and France clocked up growth of 0.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively, analysts and think-tanks are convinced that will be the last of the good news for the eurozone for quite some time.

They said the 17-nation single currency area could already be slipping into recession, noting that the stiff austerity measured aimed at tackling debt crisis problems in many countries — Italy, Spain after Greece, Ireland and Portugal and perhaps now even France — are undercutting growth.

Tensions on the bond markets mirrored investor concerns, with borrowing costs of some of the majors — France, Italy and Spain, the bloc’s second-, third- and fourth-largest economies — rising on doubts about the ability of governments to get to the root of the eurozone’s woes and reform their finances.

The gap between borrowing rates for Germany compared with France and Spain widened to new records yesterday, reflecting the acute tensions at the heart of the eurozone where the debilitating debt crisis is casting a pall over the overall growth outlook.

On Monday, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris warned of increasing signs of a slowdown in most OECD and in major non-member countries.

That came just days after the EU Commission in Brussels warned that Europe could tip back into recession over the course of 2012 due to a “vicious circle” of government debt, vulnerable banks and collapsed spending.