Europe is in crisis: with luck, EU inertia and disagreements will help save the day.

You will rarely hear this heretical thought expressed aloud in Brussels. Instead, all talk is of the need for swift, united action among the 27 member nations, whether governments are planning bail-outs for banks, or wheezes to prod people into buying cars.

It is the same with the debate over fixing global finance. As the G20 summit in London looms, the consensus is that Europe must stop squabbling about how much to regulate risk, and agree common positions quickly. The EU must speak with a single voice, it is said by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ilk, if it is to have any chance of influencing giants like America or China, whose leaders speak for a single nation.

That sounds plausible. Yet EU inertia may not be a wholly bad thing.

Europeans are used to feeling bad about their divisions. Traditionally, they feel anxious that divergent national interests leave the Union vulnerable to bossing about by more cohesive powers. True, when it comes to some issues, such as standing up to Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, a common position would give Europe more clout. And yes, in this credit crunch, there is a need to speed up agreement on how to coordinate the oversight of banks active across borders.

But when it comes to the crisis as a whole, Europe’s more hesitant approach and competing visions arguably reduce the risk of hasty, populist mistakes. To make a comparison, first consider the “Buy American” provisions inserted into Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, on its first passage through Congress. In a first version crafted by the House of Representatives, the provisions required public projects funded by the stimulus plan to use US-made iron and steel. As an attempt to save jobs, this is self-defeating. The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank, estimates that half a million tonnes of steel are involved. That is enough to create 1,000 American jobs: far fewer than would be shed by exporters if the provisions sparked a trade war. Obama signalled he wanted a final version to respect international trade laws. But as a leader who answers exclusively to US voters, not even the new president dared point out the provisions were nonsense.

A European attempt at protectionism played out differently.

On February 5, President Sarkozy said billions of euros were on offer in aid for the car industry, as long as production was not shifted from France to places like “the Czech Republic”. This was an intentional swipe: the Czech Republic inherited the rotating EU presidency from France on January 1, and French sources have made clear Sarkozy thinks the Czech government ineffectual, un-European and absurdly neo-liberal in its resistance to state intervention.

Like the Buy American provisions, Sarkozy’s ideas of blocking “delocalisation” are economically dubious. To date, French car sales have f......