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Growth in the single currency region came to a halt between April and June, raising alarm bells about the impact of an escalation of the crisis in Ukraine.  Official figures showed that Germany’s economy  shrank by a worse than expected 0.2 per cent while France endured its second quarter of zero growth.  Meanwhile Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, fell back into recession for the third time since 2008, overshadowing improvements in Portugal and Spain.   Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said some of Germany’s problems may have been temporary but there was a risk of the eurozone sliding into a triple-dip recession as confidence was dented by worries about sanctions against Russia.  He added: “Not only will an escalating crisis hit risk appetite but sanctions are also likely to have some impact on Europe’s economies in coming months.”  The European Central Bank will now come under increasing pressure to step up stimulus measures by pumping money into the economy. France piled pressure on the European Central Bank to do more to boost growth on Thursday after news that economic activity across the 18-nation single currency area came to a halt in the second quarter. With France registering zero growth for a second successive quarter, Michel Sapin, the country's finance minister, halved his growth forecast for this year, abandoned the deficit reduction target and said it was up to the Frankfurt-based ECB to respond to an "exceptional situation of weak growth and weak inflation across the eurozone". Sapin's demand came as the latest figures from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency, showed that problems in the single currency's Big Three economies – Germany, France and Italy – resulted in no increase in eurozone gross domestic product in the three months to June. That compares with an increase of 0.2% in the first quarter. However financial markets saw no immediate prospect of the ECB launching its own money creation (quantitative easing) programme until next year at the earliest, amid concerns that countries such as France and Italy would row back on structural reform if fresh growth-boosting stimulus policies were introduced. The interest rate – or yield – on 10-year German bonds briefly fell below 1% for the first time as dealers anticipated a protracted period of low growth, low inflation and low interest rates. Markets already knew that Italian output had contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter but were surprised by a similar-sized fall in Germany, which was hurt by a more challenging climate for its key export sector. France made it clear it blamed foot-dragging on the part of the ECB for the failure of the eurozone's second-biggest economy as it reduced its growth forecast for 2014 from 1% to 0.5% and ditched the 1.7% forecast for 2015, saying it would not expand by much more than 1%.