LATEST SCORE: FRANCE 15, GERMANY 15. REFEREE SOMEWHERE UNDERFOOT.

As The Slog predicted last week, EU problems are producing cracks in the relationship between the two biggest founder-members.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde fired a salvo back at the Germans this morning in the escalating war of words between the two nations on the subject of fiscal probity and what she calls ‘economic convergence’.

“It can’t just be about enforcing deficit principles,” said Largarde, “I’m not sure it is a sustainable model for the long term and for the whole of the EU”.

Just to confuse the markets further, Mme Lagarde also said the European Monetary Fund (EMF) concept was “not a priority” for the EU. In the last four working days, France has said the EMF was a priority; then the Germans said it was impractical for them; then German’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble supported the idea; now Lagarde has poo-poohed it. So the conclusion is, EU at sea all is this on issue the and over the all place it about.

The Slogger’spiece about disunity posted 11th March seems to have been prescient. So too, perhaps, was the post of later that dayreporting Sarko’s irritation with the German psyche coming back to prominence.

This sort of stuff is simply an artefact to disguise what we’ve been predicting for three years: the EU is an institution too inflexible, undisciplined and disunited to survive the cming tidal wave of Sovereign debt and local-worker nationalism.