The cheery freeze frame of the eurozone economy last quarter is no guarantee of a happy ending to what has been a horror movie for most of the single currency bloc since the onset of the great financial crisis.

The return to growth, albeit of just 0.3 per cent between the first and second quarters, is unalloyed good news for Europe and the world after 18 months of contraction.

But the recovery is vulnerable to external shocks and too weak yet to make a difference to two of the major issues hanging over the eurozone: record unemployment and the sustainability of the area’s public and private debt.

Quarterly growth of 0.7 per cent in Germany and 0.5 per cent in France, the bloc’s two biggest economies, was faster on an annualised basis than in the United States, whose economy expanded 1.7 per cent in the second quarter using that calculation.

Context counts, however. Inflation-adjusted US output is about five per cent higher than it was in the first quarter of 2008. Households have acted swiftly to pay down debt and the housing market is enjoying a brisk upswing. Growth has responded, even if the recovery has been weak by historical standards.

The eurozone, by contrast, is still in catch-up mode. Gross domestic product remains three per cent below the peak reached five years ago and, on current trends, is unlikely to regain that high water mark until the middle of 2015 at the earliest, according to Jefferies, an investment bank, in London.

Mirroring the unused resources in the economy, unemployment is a record high 12.1 per cent.

“Europe is a long way behind the US in the cycle. We had a decent Q2 – better than expected, for sure – but it’s still very early days,” said Marchel Alexandrovich, a Jefferies economist.

Some of the factors boosting growth, such as the end of a hard winter giving way to a buoyant tourism season, are inherently fleeting. A build-up in inventories – which accounted for 40 per cent of France’s growth in the second quarter – will turn out to be a dead weight if final demand does not improve.

But the benefits of the European Central Bank’s near-zero interest rates and generous liquidity provision are gradually rippling through the economy.

The drag from higher taxes and government spending cuts is fading. Global uncertainty is easing somewhat as China stabilises and economists pencil in faster US growth in 2014.

“This is what is allowing the region to exit recession. The situation is not great, but it is no longer as bad as it was last year,” Greg Fuzesi, an economist with JP Morgan, wrote.

Ebrahim Rahbari with Citi in London said he was reasonably optimistic that the eurozone would be able to keep posting quarterly growth.