I never expected a message of austerity to emerge from the Palace of Versailles, where Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, spoke last week to outline his economic strategy for the rest of his term. He left no doubt that he is not prepared to follow Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, in the direction of a balanced budget. Instead, he distinguished between “good” and “bad” government deficits, went on to explain that a good deficit is cyclical, a bad deficit structural, and then produced yet another category: a temporary deficit that would be brought down through higher economic growth in the future.

In theory, this is all fine. In practice we have reason to doubt whether he will make an earnest effort to get rid of the deficits, good or bad. One can have endless debates about the relative benefits of Germany’s legalistic approach or Mr Sarkozy’s alternative version. Whatever side of the debate you support, you will probably agree that it is not a good idea for the two largest members of the eurozone to move in opposite directions.