PRESIDENT NICOLAS Sarkozy stated his goal for the G20 summit in a speech this week. "I don't want anything to do with a summit that decides not to decide anything," Sarkozy told supporters of his UMP party. "We've run out of time. We must re-establish confidence and that won't be done without new rules to end the excesses of the past 20 years."

On a pre-G20 trip to Washington at the beginning of the week, prime minister Francois Fillon rejected the idea of a new French stimulus package, saying "we should not create a bubble of public debt".

The French emphasis on "moralising capitalism" through new regulations, and Fillon's rejection of a "bubble of public debt", are symptomatic of the profound division between the euro group and the Obama administration regarding the correct response to the crisis. As President Barack Obama has repeatedly made clear, he wants the colossal US stimulus package to be matched by a commensurate European effort. And Europe, led by Sarkozy and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, says No.

Much has changed since the first G20 summit on the global crisis was held in Washington, at Sarkozy's instigation, last November. The outgoing Bush administration had no real policy. "A front opened up between continental Europe - the euro zone - and the US with the arrival of the Obama administration," explains Eloi Laurent, an economist at the influential French think tank OFCE. "At the end of last year, Sarkozy was closer to the American, Keynesian line. He has since rallied to the German position."

There are two reasons for the French leader's change of heart. While president of the European Council, Sarkozy was unable to convince his European partners to co-ordinate budgetary policy, with a view to then co-ordinating with the US. And the domestic situation in France has worsened. "France does not want to or cannot make more of a budgetary effort now," says Laurent. Up to three million people marched in the most recent French "day of action" on March 19th, and Sarkozy fears that if he abandons his discourse of rigour and restraint, there'll be no stopping the haemorrhage of public funds.

The rationale behind the Franco-German position, Laurent says, is that the crisis was caused by the US and that the US, not Europe, must pay for it. Franco-German orthodoxy is rooted in "the culture of Maastricht" inherited from the Bundesbank - budgetary and price stability and monetary discipline. "In normal times it isn't very efficient," says Laurent.